OpenAI Starts Running Ads in ChatGPT (openai.com) 70
OpenAI has started testing ads inside ChatGPT for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers in the United States, the company said. The Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education tiers remain ad-free. Ads are matched to users based on conversation topics, past chats, and prior ad interactions, and appear clearly labeled as "sponsored" and visually separated from ChatGPT's organic responses.
OpenAI says the ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers, and advertisers receive only aggregate performance data like view and click counts rather than access to individual conversations. Users under 18 do not see ads, and ads are excluded from sensitive topics such as health, mental health, and politics. Free-tier users can opt out of ads in exchange for fewer daily messages.
Further reading: Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude Ad-free, Calls AI Conversations a 'Space To Think'.
OpenAI says the ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers, and advertisers receive only aggregate performance data like view and click counts rather than access to individual conversations. Users under 18 do not see ads, and ads are excluded from sensitive topics such as health, mental health, and politics. Free-tier users can opt out of ads in exchange for fewer daily messages.
Further reading: Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude Ad-free, Calls AI Conversations a 'Space To Think'.
OK that seals the deal! (Score:5, Insightful)
I will not use a tool that insists on stealing and plagiarizing my work so they can spew ads at me and make backdoor improvements to their product with me paying the tab..
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This type of product is not an Ad Platform no matter how much they want it to be.
When you have a lot of users, and are losing money as fast as you can get it, everything is an ad platform. There's no other way to stay in business.
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LLM's and other approaches I don't even know about may always be a Agent niche. No one is even on the scent to cognitive intelligence. The AI mantra might well get upstaged by layers of advanced automation. Or something else entirely.
Re: OK that seals the deal! (Score:2)
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And really in a more just world if OpenAI took all that money and collapses anyway folks like Altman should be persona non grata in the industry forever but it isn't so he'll be back with another billion dollar invested company and still have board seats on a dozen others. It's pretty gross.
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Given the place of the magnificent seven in the US economy, as well as the massive sucking up of the tech bros to the current administration, a bailout is all but assured.
Those poor fellows *need* my money; who am I to say no?
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What really needs to be done is to take a page from China. EVERY Chinese business has government officials at the helm.
Did you really just say you want Donald Trump, personally, to control every business in the United States?
No wonder you posted anonymously. Wouldn't want the nurses to revoke your internet privileges. You might not get a cookie at bedtime. Or they might up your medication, and you know how that makes you feel.
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Maybe they won't stay in business.
We can only hope.
Re:OK that seals the deal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Going from earning $0 in ad revenue to a trillion in ad revenue seems a bit... optimistic.
Ads aren't going to be enough to save them.
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But the longer they can keep the pyramid from collapsing, the more they can pay themselves.
a drop in the bucket (Score:2, Interesting)
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I'm pretty sure that wasn't the plan, as far as there has ever been any plan beyond hype the tech and keep getting investor money. I'm guessing they wanted to keep the basic service free to get as many people taking AI for granted as they could, and make their money off premium subscriptions sold to industry. After trying AI though industry quickly figured out that they wouldn't be able to fire all their workers and replace them all with AI agents, as promised, so industry uptake of AI has not been high at
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I have doubts there ever was a Plan A, beyond "Let's see how much money we can get from the marks," but injecting ads has always been Plan B.
Even if there was a Plan A that would have made them profitable, and even if it had worked, there would still be a plan in place from Day One to "enhance shareholder value" by adding in advertising, more and more advertising, until there's nothing else left. (And if they time it right, the IPO will be just before the stock collapses, and they'll all go buy islands in t
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I probably won't be a user, ever.
I'm sure they're fine with that. If you're not going to pay and not going to look at ads, why would they want to spend compute and bandwidth on you?
Re: OK that seals the deal! (Score:1)
Why not use data from more users to improve the product and drive up stock price which is where their real revenue comes from?
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Why not use data from more users to improve the product and drive up stock price which is where their real revenue comes from?
Apparently the math doesn't work out on that. Most likely, they expect to have enough ad-viewing users for training.
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I don't think that's a good argument. You can argue if AI is useful for you, but if you want to use AI, then you need to consider that it has costs. And you can either pay for it, or you get ads. Even though the companies are burning through a lot of investor money, they probably want to have a path to become sustainable. If (and only if) you benefit from the product enough, why don't you use the paid plan then? I think I agree with your overall sentiment that ads in an AI chat are annoying, but I see that
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You seem to be missing my point. And that point is very short and valid for every service: Hosting a service costs money, so either users pay or users get to see ads.
There may be the third option that the service monetizes your data, but I think most will agree that that is the worst option.
Welcome To The Hater's Ball (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
And especially fuck you, openAI.
I hate you all.
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They have to make money somehow. For example, Wikipedia doesn't have ads, but they do have those extremely annoying donation nags. TANSTAAFL
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I hate to tell you this, but those donation nags are ads. They are just advertising themselves, but they're still ads, just like the ad for a different TV show than the one you're watching (which happens when they can't sell that slot).
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Note that Wikipedia doesn't actually need money. Always wondered why they go all PBS on us sometimes.
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They do need money, but they have enough. They collect a lot each year that goes into the foundation and could run Wikipedia for years without any further donations. But if nobody ever donated, they would have a problem.
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What happens if? (Score:5, Funny)
What happens if it hallucinates ads that are not there?
Re:if it hallucinates ads? (Score:1)
Why would that make a difference? Most ads are bait-and-switch anyhow, and thus virtually fake. The only real danger is if it links to a dubious site like a goat-se variation.
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It takes the money and runs? Not sure what "It" refers to or where it will run to.
Can you enshittify (Score:4, Interesting)
...if the thing you're enshittifying is already bullshit?
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There's always room for more bullshit. With any luck, they'll amass so much bullshit, it becomes a black hole and sucks in all the other techbro companies with it.
Re:Can you enshittify (Score:4, Informative)
...if the thing you're enshittifying is already bullshit?
As someone who spent two years of his life hauling cow shit, I can honestly say that the answer is yes. If you miss a day of hauling shit, the cows don't stop shitting. It just continues to get deeper.
Somebody needs to make a digital skid loader and manure spreader!
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...if the thing you're enshittifying is already bullshit?
Absolutely. The next step down from bullshit is malicious bullshit.
we sawn you were asking about suicide (Score:2)
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Insurance companies hate this one weird nitrogen trick that cuts your medical bills by 100%!
Although in all seriousness, they'd probably advertise one of those sketchy online counseling services. Probably the one that rhymes with "cheddar yelp".
Re: we sawn you were asking about suicide (Score:2)
Cheddar Yelp actually sounds like a service I'd subscribe to though.
Only a matter of time until Ads influence results (Score:5, Insightful)
And Anthropic may say "we'll never do that!" today, but they are only one CEO change and one investor call away from doing it, nevertheless.
It won't just be ads, but influencing (Score:2, Insightful)
It won't just be ads, it will be as if the AI is an influencer and is steering you towards certain products and solutions. And not just because the AI company has a deal with partners, but because every business will be trying to game AI to be recommended in a response, or to align with a certain company's position, even align with their lobbying.
AI won't be ruined just by ads but by marketing and you will never be able to know if it is an objective result or not. (Not that so-called objective results from
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Death to SEO and let the LLMO games begin.
And here it is (Score:2)
Let the enshittification begin. We know how this will go.
Let's show targeted ads that no-one wants to see,
so we can reduce the load on our servers by driving away users.
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Let the enshittification begin. We know how this will go. Let's show targeted ads that no-one wants to see, so we can reduce the load on our servers by driving away users.
I believe you meant your first sentence to read, "Let the enshitification accelerate."
This could be good or bad (Score:2)
If the chat topic requested information on a product and the ad was a legitimate source of a quality example of the product. it would be helpful
If the ad is a scam, spam, or for a crappy knockoff, not helpful at all
there's more 'ifs' to add (Score:2)
"and if the Ai isn't storing and selling information about the user to the advertiser". I'm sure there's other conditions that should be levied on ad-based LLMs.
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Ads are there to get you to buy something you would not have bought without the ad. So either something that you do not need, or something for which there is a better or cheaper alternative. Nobody needs to advertise a product that everyone is recommending anyway.
Does ad blocker work? (Score:2)
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I was thinking that myself. For every company that thinks more and more annoying ads are a good thing, there are thousands (millions?) of users determined to find a way to get the content w/o said ads. I mean, hell, they should know already given how much content they stole w/o digesting ads...
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We may just have to ask for it, that's all.
You >> Can you tell me the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow. And please, no ads for me in the response. ....
ChatGPT>> Sure, here the answer with no ads. The air speed velocity of
Could just be that simple!
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A pi-hole would probably do the trick.
Enshittification begins (Score:3)
1. Overzealous investors pump in tons of cash so that service is subsidized to buy market share.
2. Investors get jittery, not seeing profits, and pull back. So ads are introduced.
3. Ads don't cover costs, now certain popular features are only available to payers.
4. Company decides to milk existing customers, then sell off service, so charge for everything.
5. Company sold to conglomerate boneyard ran by $50/hr. server admins in Timbuktu, and let the service gradually rot.
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That's ok. Installer a blocker. Wait! Is there an adBlocker for this shit yet? We may have to employ Claude to block ads on ChatGPT. And ChatGPT to block ads on Claude.
Did Always Wonder⦠(Score:4, Insightful)
Like how would you even monetize AI models to begin with? Given that open source models exist especially in China it begs the question as to how you would reliably generate revenue through models alone, especially in a scenario where the performance of most models start converging on one another so the tech moat ceases to be in the long run.
Both ads and subscription fees have proven to be obtrusive and even downright exploitative, as they always ramp up the intensity or cost respectively.
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What you've described is called enshitification of drug market in the new lingo.
"Advertisers see only..." (Score:2)
Yes, but every last bit of it will be held until the money is big enough and then they'll get it all, right back to the beginning. The company's no longer pretending to be altruistic.
goodbye, ChatGPT (Score:1)
ChatGPT was my first AI, and I enjoyed playing with it, even though it wasn't very good in its first year or two. But after this terrible decision by OpenAI, I won't be using it any longer. Now using a claude pro account ($20/month) and am VERY happy with it.
Regarding OpenAI's opening statement on ads, I'd mentally edit all their claims with the proviso "(for now)"! How much would you bet on Kalshi that they won't have weakened or violated some of these idealistic ad policies a year from now? The financial
not answers (Score:4, Insightful)
Not even cool yet (Score:2)
The big secret: what users actually want (Score:2)
"Computer, tell me what to do!"
Ok, cool. Any ad blockers for that? (Score:2)
How does ad blocking work here? The article nor OpenAI mention anything about whether adBlockers like uOrigin, Ghostery and friends will be able to block those pesky ads. May be you just have to ask ChatGPT to not show ads and you are done? Or are ads surreptitiously inserted into responses and there is no easy way to filter them? May be you will have to vibe code a blocker using ChatGPT?
Just thinking loudly. It's a brave new world all over again.
too soon (Score:2)
Bad business. They are doing it too soon, turning off too many prospective addicts.
Might not be such a bad idea... (Score:2)
Your ideal ad target is the 'gullible twats who know bugger all and yet can afford technology' segment.
There has to be quite a few of those amongst chatbot users.