You could be right.

If this is Medium's new normal, it'll change the platform for sure.

It could be that the future of Medium is to become a great place for (1) human writers who don't care about getting paid and for (2) human writers who write with the help of AI and don't put their content behind the paywall.

If you, like me, want to get paid for your work you can always (1) post your work on a paying market and then (2) repost it on Medium to get it to additional readers.

That might be what I end up doing.