The cost for AI companies might be $5000 but the "essentially free" could be close to the limit of what people are willing to spend. If that's the case then enshittification will continue and/or many AI companies will never be profitable.
If the vendor says it's worth $200, then it's worth at most $200 unless it's a preclude to the predatory bait&switch or undercutting the normal market.
We have seen this before. Companies using VC money to take over the market and then increase prices. In the end, we're worse off without these scumbags but some will still sing that we got free service do it's bot enshitification.
Looks like enshittification on steroids, honestly.