Saying Please and Thank You to ChatGPT Is Costing OpenAI Tens of Millions — Seriously

Here is something nobody expected to be a headline in 2026.

Saying "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT is costing OpenAI tens of millions of dollars.

Not figuratively. Literally.

Where Did This Come From?

Someone posted on X — "I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying please and thank you to their models."

That post got 5.7 million views.

And then Sam Altman himself replied.

His exact words — "Tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never know."

Half joke. Fully true.

Why Do Two Words Cost That Much?

This is the interesting part.

ChatGPT does not read your message the way you do. It breaks every word — every single word — into tiny pieces called tokens. Each token requires real computation. Real electricity. Real money.

One polite prompt is nothing. But ChatGPT now has over 500 million weekly users. Multiply two extra words across hundreds of millions of conversations every single day — and those tokens add up to a genuinely enormous electricity bill.

A single ChatGPT query already uses 10 times more energy than a standard Google search. Add "please" and "thank you" to that — and at scale, you are looking at millions of extra dollars just in electricity.

This is the hidden battle happening inside AI companies right now. Every word a user types — every token — is money. Big companies are fighting over fractions of efficiency on a scale most of us cannot imagine.

Should You Stop Being Polite?

No. And Altman was not suggesting that either.

He called it "money well spent." His tone was warm, not frustrated.

And there is actually a practical reason to stay polite.

Microsoft's design director for Copilot made an interesting observation — when you use polite, respectful language with an AI, it mirrors that tone back. The responses tend to be calmer, more thoughtful, and better structured. It is not just manners. It genuinely affects the output.

67% of Americans regularly say please and thank you when speaking to chatbots. Of those, 55% believe it is the ethical thing to do. Another 12% admitted they do it just in case machines become self-aware someday.

Honestly — same.

The Bigger Picture Nobody Is Talking About

Here is what this story is really about.

AI companies are burning through money at a speed that is hard to wrap your head around. OpenAI is not profitable yet — and does not expect to be for several years. The infrastructure costs are staggering.

And yet the very behaviour that costs them money — users being polite, engaged, conversational — is also what makes ChatGPT feel human. It is what keeps people coming back.

Take away the warmth and you lose the product.

So OpenAI lets it run. Pays the bill. And calls it money well spent.

There is something quietly remarkable about that.