This is correct, OpenAI is not a free service, you need to pay for each API call. I don’t think there are free services that provide API access. Many people are not bothered by paying a dollar or two per month for the extra capabilities AI gives them, so we’ll keep this functionality in the app.
There has been a suggestion for integrating Ollama, which runs on your own computer. This will give you a free option once we integrate it. It won’t actually be “free” of course - you will need to buy a pretty powerful computer to run local models at comfortable speeds, and you’ll have to invest time in setting everything up.