Torba doesn't know how to set it up and maintain it, so he has to pay people to do that for them, and those salaries aren't cheap
What exactly is the business model for Gab's AI? Is there a demand for an ideologically neutral/right-wing biased AI bot that people are willing to pay for or visit often enough for ads to generate revenue? Personally, I doubt it.
The AI is open source code. I don't know if it is making money, but it's cheap.
Two things, though:
You know what would be more based than based AI? No AI at all.