OpenAI today announced the inevitable, that ChatGPT will start showing ads in your queries, and they’re pretty prominent too.
Ads run the modern internet, whether you like it or not, but AI chatbots have often been mostly devoid of them. Google has explicitly said that ads aren’t coming to the Gemini chatbot experience, for example, though has been testing ads in things like its AI features in Search.
Still, it was inevitable that ChatGPT would be adding ads of some kind, and now we know what they look like.
OpenAI says that ads are coming to ChatGPT users “in the coming weeks” if they’re a free user or on the new $8/month “Go” plan that offers “10x more messages, file uploads and image creation than the free tier,” while also boosting ChatGPT’s memory. That new plan is less than half of the cost of ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20/month and has no ads.
For the time being, ads in ChatGPT will be a “test” in the US, and they’ll appear at the bottom of answers “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation.” The answer appears at the top of the response, with a visible line separating a “Sponsored” related result. In OpenAI’s demo, a query about “authentic Mexican dish ideas” is followed by an ad for a grocery delivery app with hot sauce, while another advertises lodging in a city the user is looking for information on, with the option to “chat with” that sponsor for more information.
Users were pretty quick to point out that the ads in ChatGPT take up a considerable amount of screen real estate, though they presumably will vary depending on the answer the AI spits out.
OpenAI says:
The best ads are useful, entertaining, and help people discover new products and services. Given what AI can do, we’re excited to develop new experiences over time that people find more helpful and relevant than any other ads. Conversational interfaces create possibilities for people to go beyond static messages and links. For example, soon you might see an ad and be able to directly ask the questions you need to make a purchase decision.
The company further adds that advertisements are “not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health or politics,” or to users under the age of 18.
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