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A thread on Reddit’s Artificial Intelligence forum has sparked debate about the long-term viability of businesses centered on AI prompt engineering. The core concern revolves around a potential “race to the bottom,” driven by the ease with which prompts can be reverse-engineered. Some users argue that the readily available methods for extracting and replicating effective prompts will inevitably lead to increased competition, decreased value of services, and a struggle for prompt engineering businesses to maintain profitability. A recurring sentiment is that these businesses, in effect, are subsidizing larger AI companies by refining and optimizing prompts that ultimately benefit the underlying AI models. The conversation originated following the discovery of an app claiming to reverse-engineer AI prompts.