Firstly, that a "?" in the search query triggers AI is most definitively a way it's accidentally triggered.
If I search "what is the best search engine?" I am looking for forum threads where that matter is being discussed, not an LLM answer. This is common for queries stated more like questions, mine was just an example.
In addition, younger searchers often write search queries more like questions, and they might also be the ones that are the least equipped to understand the limitations of a "assistant answer" or might have parents that don't want their children to get used to that type of searching (just accepting the LLM summary/answer rather than exploring the sources) - I mean there's a reason I'm paying for hopefully the best search results.
Basically, as long as you can trigger an AI answer trough the query itself, and technically as long as you can't disable the "quick answer" with parental controls or w/e users can and will unintentionally trigger AI responses.
Secondly, as mentioned you can most definitively separate money from no-ai users and ai users, but what you (@RoxyRoxyRoxy) are talking about is how those money would be spent.
Thibaultmol [...] and that jar is only used for non-ai related spending" because you'll just have the percentage of spending from regular subscribers have a higher percentage towards ai
But that different percentage for AI development/queries between subscriber groups is exactly one of the things being requested, no? 0% of one groups jar is being used to fund AI development/queries, and a larger than current % of the ai-using groups money is being used for AI.
Noone is asking kagi to reduce their AI-spending in total if it's lucrative for them, it's about being able to vote with ones wallet.
Kagi:s clumping together search and AI is something in-between things like including a cute plushie "free" with ones bike purchase (of which a large percentage end up in the thrash, and every consumer actually paid for even though it was "free") and companies including a bunch of random services into one subscription just to be able to motivate a higher fee (like trying to purchase just email - and all offers including wordpress sites, vpn, passwordmanagers and whatnot instead of just the email service).
