The cost of simply retrieving an answer from the Web is infinitely smaller than the cost of generating a new one.
Great interview with Sasha Luccioni from Huggingface on all the ways that using generative AI for everything is both a) hugely costly compared to existing methods, and b) insane.
He was also claiming AI would destroy us a few years ago. (Not talking about climate, skynet style)
Side note: listening to him is as bad as listening to a celebrity.