The free AI pilot is the pricing model.

A vendor offers a free ninety-day pilot of their AI tool. Named customer success manager, a polite note that pricing will be confirmed once you have seen the value. No invoice, no commitment, just a quiet integration into one team's workflow. By week ten your operations team has rebuilt around the tool, two people on the floor have learned its quirks, and a junior has wired it into a Zapier chain nobody documented. By month four the procurement conversation begins. By month six, ripping it out costs more than keeping it.

The interesting number is never the pilot price. It is the integration hours your staff are pouring in, the export format that turns out to be proprietary, the second-order tools needed to make the first one useful, and the renewal quote that lands in month thirteen once the integration partner you were promised has become a paid add-on. By the time the trial ends, the switching cost is higher than the annual fee. The negotiation in month four was already lost in month one.

Before signing any AI pilot this month, write the offboarding plan first. One page. Where the data sits, who exports it in what format, what it would cost in hours and pounds to remove the tool next Friday, and what month thirteen costs at list price. If the vendor cannot help you write that page inside a day, the pilot is no longer a pilot. Price it, or end it.