> It's also in their best interest to do so, because if they don't and these provider hosted agents become the norm, demand for independent inference would drop.

I disagree with this part. AI companies will want to try their damndest to control distribution of AI, so that they can enshittify later.

Consumers conscious of this will want an alternative, of course. Might be niche similar to how Kagi is in search because big tech will always have a AI inference cost advantage + making users the product (extra $ from ads & purchase cuts) + the good old strategy of dumping.