The artificial intelligence boom has provided an unusual windfall for a tiny island in the Caribbean.
ChatGPT's debut nearly two years ago heralded the dawn of the AI age and unintentionally contributed a huge amount to Anguilla’s economy. It kicked off a digital gold rush as companies scrambled to stake their own claims by acquiring websites that end in .ai.
This is all thanks to an obscure 1974 set of postal standards allotted each country a URL suffix (like .com), and Anguilla's great piece of luck in being allotted .ai. Who could have predicted that a couple of letters would end up contributing tens of millions of dollars to the island's economy?
The British territory, with a population of less than 16,000, was one of hundreds of obscure top-level domains assigned to individual countries and territories based on their names. While the domains are supposed to indicate a website has a link to a particular region or language, it's not a requirement. That has become very good news for Anguilla.
Anguilla's earnings from web domain registration fees quadrupled last year to $32 million, thanks to the surging interest in AI. The income now accounts for about 20 percent of Anguilla's total government revenue and is only likely to rise.
Anguilla’s government, which uses the gov.ai home page, collects a fee every time an .ai web address is purchased, renewed or sold off.