The average .ai domain name is owned by a criminal. In my opinion.

These criminals—though some will argue they have committed no crime, strictly speaking—these criminals are guilty of purchasing every vaguely pronounceable .ai domain name, with no intent of ever building anything on those domains.

Instead, after purchasing a domain, they immediately slap a "for sale" page on it. The for sale page is generally outfitted with an outrageously prohibitive price; think tens or hundreds of thousands, USD.

With this stunning act of public-minded value creation accomplished, our criminal sits back and waits. Waits, perhaps, for years; however long it takes for some person—scratch that, some business, as no individual would pay these prices—to finally relent and pay the ransom required to release the domain name.

As one example: the domain reseller gurge.com lists about 100 .ai domains for sale, for prices that “start around $20k.” As of this writing, their inventory includes domains like “idea.ai”, “pixel.ai”, “rate.ai”, “haggle.ai”, and “chello.ai” (sic; yes they are asking $20,000 for a misspelling of cello).

Though I am a skeptic by disposition, like many other skeptics I’ve been won over by AI generally and expect it will become (if not already) a world-altering technology. I cannot imagine what somebody may someday conceive to build on “pixel.ai,” for instance. But I’m firmly convinced it’s in everybody’s interest to find out.

As it stands, none of us will know what “pixel.ai” could be, until some company cuts the nameless proprietor of gurge.com his pound of flesh.

Again, some will argue the person running gurge.com has done nothing illegal. But once I’m in charge? He’s on the next flight to CECOT, boarding group one.