End of the era of completely free AI? ChatGPT gets ads, and here's how they will look
OpenAI has moved from words to action regarding the monetization of the world's most popular chatbot. Users of free versions and the cheapest plans will soon see banners in their chats — first in the US, and then in other countries. Let's figure out what this will change.
Photo: Jernej Furman/flickr.com/cc-by-2.0
According to data obtained from beta versions of the Android app and web interface, users will be greeted by a full-screen message about the changes upon first launch. The ad review was done by tech-blogger Tibor Biaho on Twitter.
Warning about the appearance of ads in ChatGPT. Photo: btibor91/twitter.com
Ad blocks will not appear within the text of the robot's responses, which could confuse the user, but will be placed in separate zones and marked with the tag "Sponsored".
Ads are located in the Sponsored field. Photo: btibor91/twitter.com
The technical side of the issue causes the most discussion: the ad selection algorithm will rely on both the topic of your current conversation and the history of previous chats. OpenAI assures that advertisers will not get direct access to your dialogues; only generalized statistics of views and clicks will be available to them.
For those concerned about privacy, an "Ads control" settings page is provided, where personalization based on memory and history can be disabled, although context-based advertising from the current conversation will still remain.
Ads Control menu item. Photo: btibor91/twitter.com
From a user experience perspective, the first implementation looks quite restrained. Users will also be able to hide specific ads via the menu and even ask ChatGPT about the ad content if they need details without clicking the link.
Query to ChatGPT about ads. Photo: btibor91/twitter.com
The introduction of advertising has already provoked a strong reaction from competitors. Anthropic, the creator of the Claude chatbot, even launched an advertising campaign mocking the potential intrusiveness of ads in AI assistants.
This also mocks the change in rhetoric from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Previously, he spoke negatively about the advertising model, but now he calls it a way to maintain free access for billions of people.
It remains unclear whether advertising will remain as unobtrusive in the future. The history of tech giants shows that advertising pressure usually only increases over time.