Ads are a ratchet that only tighten in one direction. Once the paychecks of 1000s of motivated, intelligent OpenAI employees depend on ad revenue increasing, the only option is to make them more invasive, more prevalent, more annoying, more data hungry etc.

This probably signals the beginning of the end for OpenAI. Eventually all of the AI chatbots will have Ads at least on the free and low-cost tiers. But there's a strong incentive not to begin enshitification until the number of competitors has dwindled, and an oligarchy has been established. Google, Meta et al. can afford to lose money on AI for a long time, because they have real revenue from other business products; they can stay Ad free until the small-fry go bust.

How long will it take for those ads to move from the bottom of the page to the top? How long until the borders between answers and ads starts to blur?

I get that OpenAI has to do something, but really, all those promises, try to convince everyone that ChatGPT will revolutionise everything and the best monetization plan is ads.... Again?

It's sad that OpenAI talking about developing AGI.

But the only revenue model that they still can come up with is Ads.

For all the advancement we have made in technology from the 90s web, social networks, mobile apps, ,AI Chat bots - the business model that almost all of them will eventually resort to is Ads.

We need some new breakthroughs in monetization side of things.

> we decide which ad to show by matching ads submitted by advertisers with the topic of your conversation, your past chats, and past interactions with ads. > [...] > Advertisers do not have access to your chats, chat history, memories, or personal details.

Going to hazard a guess that OpenAI is using LLMs to read convos and decide which ads you should see? Hopefully that's isolated and locked down. I can easily see that machinery turning from "what ad should we show this user" to "is this user doing something bad/a protected class etc.". Also terrifying to think that it may be the advertisers asking the questions to decide what ads to show...

The ads in Google also started like this. (However, to my knowledge, there is no way I can pay Google to get the ads in my search removed)

It’s difficult to believe that they’ll keep privacy guarantees. Some of the most valuable types of targeting are lookalike audiences or following up from other ads elsewhere.

How would OAI allow them to target without access to de-anonymized data?

Buyers will want to exclude existing customers, which requires the same.

The product managers will have explicit KPIs tied to conversion. At some point, like at Google, this will break. It has to or OAI can’t grow into its current valuation, let alone any future one.

I have a question though, if they don't have access to chats but they find out the enchilada ad was performing the best, something like this can provide enough information to be used to know about peoples private chats. When someone clicks on an ad you collect a fingerprint, then add more ads and fingerprint more and get a stronger picture about the individuals private chats in chatgpt.

If I were a large donor to a state that was interested in increasing action against abortion, I could hypothetically start running ads targeting people looking to get an abortion with a service that either provides assistance or other means parallel to assistance. If I target that state chatgpt would automatically match my ads to those individuals and I'd have my data. I could increase my donations to target and cull whatever little options those people have left.

I was at the bar when Claude's answer to this came on. One of my mates was absolutely confused as to what Claude was.

They assumed it was an an ad for a dating app or something. I had to explain it was an ad specifically targeted at maybe the 5% of people who work in software.

Honestly... I don't mind ads. For example, I make music as my main hobby. I actually enjoy getting advertisements for VSTs( virtual software instruments) and various pieces of gear.

I have no problem with Open AI showing relevant ads. Ain't nothing free

> Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.

I wonder if this is a don't-break-product-value thing, or just compliance (ads need to be clearly labeled, but OpenAI seems like it has the risk appetite to ignore that kind of thing).

switching to gemini right now... this is insane! why should i pay openai to get unsolicited ads?!

I wonder if OpenAI will be able to use their gen 2 user-observation-adaption platform to actually improve ads?

This could be one of those product afterthoughts that end up being the big company move, like when Apple did the Iphone and then added the AppStore afterwards.

so perfectly personalized ads? the CPM on this is probably wild (for openai).

While the general census will be largely negative, it good for advertisers, i guess.

Kinda sad that in 3 decades into the tech industry the only viable business model is to build a moat and then sell ads

People are missing another point - API's are never going to show ads. So even in the worst case where every competitor is showing ads, you could get ad free experience by paying a metered billing rate. Which is not so big a deal?

Have to wonder if the IPO push for this year is genuine now

I Am Shocked, I Am Shocked, Well Not That Shocked.

"The test will be for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not have ads."

It was gonna happen eventually.

Ben Thompson has long been insistent that ChatGPT and other AI tools basically have to have ads and it's been a big mistake they didn't have them sooner. It's an interesting take:

> What I think is clear is they have to build an advertising product, and the reason they have to build an advertising product is any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because it’s such a beneficial model to everyone involved, and the reason it’s so beneficial is you get to indefinitely and infinitely increase average revenue per user without any worries about price elasticity, because the entire increase in average revenue per user is borne by the advertisers who are paying it willingly because they’re getting a positive return on their investment, and everyone’s using it for free so you can reach the whole world. Then what happens with that is once you get that model going, you have a massive R&D advantage, because you have so much more money coming in than anyone who doesn’t have that cycle or who has to charge users for it.

https://stratechery.com/2026/ads-in-chatgpt-why-openai-needs...

> This point, more than anything else, explains why the company so desperately needs an advertising model. Advertising is the only potential business model that can meaningfully bend the revenue curve such that the company can not just fund its compute but gain leverage on it, for all of the reasons I laid out before: first, advertising increases the breadth of the business, in that you can offer a better product to more people, increasing usage and expanding inventory. Second, advertising increases the depth of the business, in that there is infinite upside in terms of average revenue per user: more usage means more inventory on one hand, and building out the capability for effective targeting and high conversion rates increases the amount that advertisers are willing to pay — even as the cost to the user remains the same (ideally free).

It's valuable to remember that advertisers will pay more per user than users will, and that's hard to beat in a competitive market.

Also, it's fascinating how much people _like_ ads when done properly. Ask normal people about Instagram ads, for example. They find them useful!

Dont't be evil, etc... we've seen it all before. Eventually ads will be hidden in the answers, it's just a matter of time, enshittification ensues eventually.

God, how stupid do they think we are?

Folks ...were promised AGI and end up with a GenAi porn Reddit...

Nope. I'm out. I might still use the API, but the monthly subscription is already gone and I'm on to Claude.

>Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not have ads.

For now, or for ever?

Try this in ChatGPT: "So ChatGPT is getting ads. The Google guys wrote _the_ paper explaining why ads in search are a bad idea, and Google set about demonstrating it. How can ChatGPT avoid the same fate with all the same incentives?"

Anthropic was absolutely right!

BETRAYAL

I hate ads too but whats the outrage? Did people expect it to be free forever? Everything else has ads. youtube, instagram, x, google etc. etc.

> What will always remain true: ChatGPT’s answers remain independent and unbiased, conversations stay private, and people keep meaningful control over their experience.

Translation: They will very slowly abandon their 'principles', just like they did with the moment they took investment from Microsoft and the VCs.

This is how ChatGPT gets destroyed and 'ensh*ttified' for everyone. The same people who jumped ship from Meta and destroyed Facebook, Instagram, and soon Threads are also the same people that are about apply the same recipe on to ChatGPT at OpenAI.

The researchers that were there pre-ChatGPT are now being replaced by opportunist grifters that will ruin the product overrun by ads once again. It would be no-different to Google Ads.

Now we need ad-blockers for LLMs to be in place "for the benefit of humanity".

I feel like people just ignore market forces and what causes certain companies to pursue strategies. The reason for Ads is not some thing like greed, but rather get more people to use ChatGPT which can help with economies of scale, brand recognition, training data.