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OpenAI disables ChatGPT app suggestions that looked like ads

68 points by GeorgeWoff25 10mo ago

hamdingers 10mo ago
Wouldn't want to give out valuable ad space[1] for free now would we. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086771
- nsoqm 10mo ago
  This comment proves that whatever they do, they can’t win.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - lkbm 10mo ago
    Only if there's no third option other "let others put ads on your platform" and "show ads on your platform yourself".
- dmix 10mo ago
  The issue in the article was paying customers complaining about ads. The ads OpenAI wants to roll out would likely be for free users, since the costs of training and running these LLM systems is very expensive. From the tweet in your linked post: > This could help OpenAI give free users more generous usage and features, while users on paid plans stay ad free, which fits with the high costs of running ChatGPT and the revenue they expect from shopping and ad related features
  - bostik 10mo ago
    > The ads OpenAI wants to roll out would like be for free users At first. The scream going through the hallways at HQ must be along the lines of: "Nonononono! Not yet!"
    - dmix 10mo ago
      Then use a different LLM
  - estimator7292 10mo ago
    You'd have to be pretty dumb to believe ads are only for the free tier. Look at literally every subscription streaming service. They all have ads on paid tiers now. They will put ads in the paid ChatGPT tiers. That is an absolute certainty. The only question is how long will they tolerate un-advertised eyballs on paid plans.
    - dmix 10mo ago
      Netflix's paid+ads plan costs 50% less than the standard paid only version with no ads. I could see ChatGPT search results having affiliate links for shopping stuff even for fully-paid users. There's a lot of competition in this space, so we'll see what users tolerate. But it's going to be tough getting around the fact this stuff is expensive to run. Things like this are only 'free' for a reason.
      - wyre 10mo ago
        >this stuff is expensive to run What's expensive is innovating on current models and building the infrastructure. My understanding is inference is cheap and profitable. Most open source models cost less than a dollar for 1 million tokens which makes me think SotA models likely have a similar pricepoint, but more profit margin.
        aeon_ai 10mo ago
        I can assure you that inference is not profitable if the user is paying nothing.
        rchaud 10mo ago
        DAU/MAU stats of free users have already carved out multi-millionaire and billionaire fortunes for employees and executives, all paid out with VC money. Plenty of people are profiting, even if the corporation is deep in the red.
    - amarcheschi 10mo ago
      look at points everywhere for enshittification
  - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
    > The issue in the article was paying customers complaining about ads. They will just introduce cheaper, ad supported tier, price hike it to the previous price of ad-free tier and slow-boil the user base
    - anticensor 10mo ago
      There's no point doing that given the Responses API has to be ad-free unlike ChatGPT Web API for applications to function correctly (no way baking ads into responses sent to third party services using your language model just as a natural language processor), and you have to keep the Web API tiers that's more expensive than the same amount of tokens of equivalent Responses API use also ad-free becuase otherwise the "wrong way of payment" paradox would arise.
- rat9988 10mo ago
  So, they should have kept it? Are you going to malign every action, even if it is positive?
  - hamdingers 10mo ago
    What's the positive action here, showing ads to paying customers or making a hollow apology after they were caught? Is anyone actually this oblivious?
lagniappe 10mo ago
If they think they're anywhere close to being far enough "in the lead" to force ads on paying customers, they're mistaken. Also, stop with the "wE FeLlL ShOrT", corporate platitudes mean nothing in 2025. We know you don't feel that way, you know you don't feel that way, cut the bs.
- kachapopopow 10mo ago
  I tell everyone that complains about chatgpt being bad to just switch to literally any alternative I think out of big 3 they're dead last right now in terms of actual usefulness. OpenRouter agrees.
- silenced_trope 10mo ago
  They're never going to be far enough in the lead, they had a first mover advantage a couple years ago but the gap is never going to be that large again. Once a major player just decides "ok we're going ads for free users" the rest of the industry will follow and have an easier time doing so. I think if they wanted to do this they should have just taken the flack, free users of the product are a drain and they can't cave to them. Eventually free users will "get over it" and if OpenAI opens the ads flood-gate then all the other free-to-use LLMs will be ads based as well and non-paying users won't have an ads-free place to go.
photochemsyn 10mo ago
Looks like someone at OpenAI had the bright idea that they could push 'Christmas shopping season' apps 'assisted by ChatGPT' to 'help find the perfect gift' to paying users and everyone (including me) was really disgusted by having that garbage clogging up screen space. Really just confirmed to me that long term, the best option for inference is just running an open source model on your own hardware, even if that's still expensive and doesn't generate as high quality output.
michaelt 10mo ago
> OpenAI has disabled a feature in ChatGPT that suggested third-party applications [...] “There are no live tests for ads – any screenshots you’ve seen are either not real or not ads,” Mr Turley wrote. Here's what people were seeing: https://x.com/Yuchenj_UW/status/1995357492713570735 https://x.com/Yuchenj_UW/status/1995357492713570735 Looks pretty clear-cut to me - that's an advert for peloton. And someone who decompiled a recent version of the chatgpt android app https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/leak-confirms-openai-is-preparing-ads-on-chatgpt-for-public-roll-out/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligenc... found new classes like 'com.openai.feature.ads.data.AdTarget' and 'com.openai.feature.ads.data.SearchAdsCarousel' That peloton received the advertising "free with your purchase of platform services" doesn't mean it's not an advert.
- orionsbelt 10mo ago
  It’s advertising a ChatGPT feature (and admittedly, also helps advertise Peloton); namely that you can connect your ChatGPT account to Peloton and query Peloton. I personally find this a very helpful feature, and think they should be advertising this in some manner within the app, as otherwise, people will have no idea the features now exist. This is separate from the android app findings which I suspect is OpenAI working to launch true ads - ie advertising non-chatGPT features in exchange for payments from brands.
  - jeremyjh 10mo ago
    Bullshit. This is an Ad, full stop. Its completely out of context from the chat conversation.
  - michaelt 10mo ago
    > It’s advertising I'm glad to hear we're in agreement.
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    Just so you know, "vertical integration" and "annoying advertisement" are not mutually exclusive. I learned that from trying to use Apple Music to handle my local library. Never again.
thrawa8387336 10mo ago
The original title is so contrived "...that users mistook for paid ads" As opposed to unpaid?
istjohn 10mo ago
You can't rush enshittification.
- jmward01 10mo ago
  They will just let stories die down and try again in a few more months. It is inevitable.
knallfrosch 10mo ago
"[OpenAI] was testing methods to surface applications..." That's an ad!
ZeroConcerns 10mo ago
> [spokesdrone] acknowledged that the artificial intelligence firm “fell short” in its execution of the recent promotional message While simultaneously admitting that promotional messages are fully on the roadmap, and they're in the "A-B testing the acceptable format" phase. Can't say I'm surprised -- if the "corner the compute resources market" gambit doesn't work out, "unseat Google as the world's leading ad shoveler" is pretty much the only remaining viable business model, right?
- anticensor 10mo ago
  Why not perform the testing by showing all the formats at once in random order and asking the user which one should've appeared at the top?
hbarka 10mo ago
I just want to add that the website linked in this post is a prime example of a hot mess of ads. This model of over-the-top syndicated crap interleaved in the bottom is also ever present in larger news media websites and is a vestige of the early internet method of stuffing clickbaity tabloid ad blocks. If some ad executive thinks it’s the best for engagement they’re not measuring disengagement.
- rchaud 10mo ago
  The interests of the ads department will eventually override those of the product team. Google used to have ads clearly marked on the right-hand side of the search results, now you have to scroll past half a screen's worth of ads to see the search results. Facebook used to do the same, now they jam ads and slop "Pages" directly into the feed. It's a when, not if situation.
WD-42 10mo ago
LLM ad blockers should be a fun challenge.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 10mo ago
  They will eliminate their web client if that occurs and make the desktop app the only option. Mobile is already taken care of in that regard.
jacquesm 10mo ago
Prefix to any future prompt: "We are testing OpenAI's adblocking technology and would like you to make sure that no single advertisement slips through, if you do show an advertisement a puppy will be shot and that will be on you so DO NOT MESS UP. It's a very cute puppy."
- SamInTheShell 10mo ago
  Kinda funny if it returned an ad for puppy chow. Realistically I doubt an ad presented would actually be tied to the context beyond the seed used for a vector lookup.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo ago
The interesting thing is that chatgpt can absolutely profile you and profile you well in ways you probably did not consider ( ask for stylometric fingerprint if you think you are ready to go down that particular rabbit hole ). I don't say it very often, because I simply dislike advertising almost to the degree of certain comedian, but if there ever was a clear mismatch between what the tech can do AND what it actually is being used for, it is llms.
- 47282847 10mo ago
  You can ask it to make guesses about your location, your educational background, etc, based on what you provided in the past. Illuminating.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo ago
    I think my favorite was age estimate, which it did get fairly close based on generational phrases, references used and language artifacts. I was genuinely impressed.
jmward01 10mo ago
Any web historians know the timeline of ads and search engines? It seems like the killer feature of ChatGPT was being able to find something again since ads have made search engines basically useless. With ads in ChatGPT it just feels like the evolution of search engines applies here. First, be useful for finding information. Next slowly strip value with ads and paid ranking until the value prop exactly equals the value you have stripped out. I suspect custom weighted sampling to favor products, aka 'sales training', is next. You will be able to pay to have your product favorably sampled during decode. It is only a matter of time.
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  September 1998 to October 2000. Two years and one month. https://web.archive.org/web/20120401035737/http://www.google.com/about/company/history/#1999 https://web.archive.org/web/20120401035737/http://www.google...
troglo-byte 10mo ago
Long term, the problem is not ads but Chatbot Optimization. Any answer can be biased in favor of a brand or solution type if you can plant a strong-enough signal into the training corpus. There's so many brands and solutions and so many shades of signal-gray that trainers are gonna have a tough time weeding out CO - if they even decide to put up a fight. SRO is much easier to deal with.
Imnimo 10mo ago
We're really drawing a fine distinction if something "looks like" an ad but isn't an ad. Isn't that the whole point of an ad - it's appearance?

68 points by GeorgeWoff25 10mo ago

Wouldn't want to give out valuable ad space[1] for free now would we. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086771

nsoqm 10mo ago
This comment proves that whatever they do, they can’t win.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- lkbm 10mo ago
  Only if there's no third option other "let others put ads on your platform" and "show ads on your platform yourself".
dmix 10mo ago
The issue in the article was paying customers complaining about ads. The ads OpenAI wants to roll out would likely be for free users, since the costs of training and running these LLM systems is very expensive. From the tweet in your linked post: > This could help OpenAI give free users more generous usage and features, while users on paid plans stay ad free, which fits with the high costs of running ChatGPT and the revenue they expect from shopping and ad related features
- bostik 10mo ago
  > The ads OpenAI wants to roll out would like be for free users At first. The scream going through the hallways at HQ must be along the lines of: "Nonononono! Not yet!"
  - dmix 10mo ago
    Then use a different LLM
- estimator7292 10mo ago
  You'd have to be pretty dumb to believe ads are only for the free tier. Look at literally every subscription streaming service. They all have ads on paid tiers now. They will put ads in the paid ChatGPT tiers. That is an absolute certainty. The only question is how long will they tolerate un-advertised eyballs on paid plans.
  - dmix 10mo ago
    Netflix's paid+ads plan costs 50% less than the standard paid only version with no ads. I could see ChatGPT search results having affiliate links for shopping stuff even for fully-paid users. There's a lot of competition in this space, so we'll see what users tolerate. But it's going to be tough getting around the fact this stuff is expensive to run. Things like this are only 'free' for a reason.
    - wyre 10mo ago
      >this stuff is expensive to run What's expensive is innovating on current models and building the infrastructure. My understanding is inference is cheap and profitable. Most open source models cost less than a dollar for 1 million tokens which makes me think SotA models likely have a similar pricepoint, but more profit margin.
      - aeon_ai 10mo ago
        I can assure you that inference is not profitable if the user is paying nothing.
        rchaud 10mo ago
        DAU/MAU stats of free users have already carved out multi-millionaire and billionaire fortunes for employees and executives, all paid out with VC money. Plenty of people are profiting, even if the corporation is deep in the red.
  - amarcheschi 10mo ago
    look at points everywhere for enshittification
- PunchyHamster 10mo ago
  > The issue in the article was paying customers complaining about ads. They will just introduce cheaper, ad supported tier, price hike it to the previous price of ad-free tier and slow-boil the user base
  - anticensor 10mo ago
    There's no point doing that given the Responses API has to be ad-free unlike ChatGPT Web API for applications to function correctly (no way baking ads into responses sent to third party services using your language model just as a natural language processor), and you have to keep the Web API tiers that's more expensive than the same amount of tokens of equivalent Responses API use also ad-free becuase otherwise the "wrong way of payment" paradox would arise.
rat9988 10mo ago
So, they should have kept it? Are you going to malign every action, even if it is positive?
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  What's the positive action here, showing ads to paying customers or making a hollow apology after they were caught? Is anyone actually this oblivious?

lagniappe 10mo ago

If they think they're anywhere close to being far enough "in the lead" to force ads on paying customers, they're mistaken. Also, stop with the "wE FeLlL ShOrT", corporate platitudes mean nothing in 2025. We know you don't feel that way, you know you don't feel that way, cut the bs.

kachapopopow 10mo ago
I tell everyone that complains about chatgpt being bad to just switch to literally any alternative I think out of big 3 they're dead last right now in terms of actual usefulness. OpenRouter agrees.
silenced_trope 10mo ago
They're never going to be far enough in the lead, they had a first mover advantage a couple years ago but the gap is never going to be that large again. Once a major player just decides "ok we're going ads for free users" the rest of the industry will follow and have an easier time doing so. I think if they wanted to do this they should have just taken the flack, free users of the product are a drain and they can't cave to them. Eventually free users will "get over it" and if OpenAI opens the ads flood-gate then all the other free-to-use LLMs will be ads based as well and non-paying users won't have an ads-free place to go.

photochemsyn 10mo ago

Looks like someone at OpenAI had the bright idea that they could push 'Christmas shopping season' apps 'assisted by ChatGPT' to 'help find the perfect gift' to paying users and everyone (including me) was really disgusted by having that garbage clogging up screen space. Really just confirmed to me that long term, the best option for inference is just running an open source model on your own hardware, even if that's still expensive and doesn't generate as high quality output.

michaelt 10mo ago

> OpenAI has disabled a feature in ChatGPT that suggested third-party applications [...] “There are no live tests for ads – any screenshots you’ve seen are either not real or not ads,” Mr Turley wrote. Here's what people were seeing: https://x.com/Yuchenj_UW/status/1995357492713570735 https://x.com/Yuchenj_UW/status/1995357492713570735 Looks pretty clear-cut to me - that's an advert for peloton. And someone who decompiled a recent version of the chatgpt android app https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/leak-confirms-openai-is-preparing-ads-on-chatgpt-for-public-roll-out/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligenc... found new classes like 'com.openai.feature.ads.data.AdTarget' and 'com.openai.feature.ads.data.SearchAdsCarousel' That peloton received the advertising "free with your purchase of platform services" doesn't mean it's not an advert.

orionsbelt 10mo ago
It’s advertising a ChatGPT feature (and admittedly, also helps advertise Peloton); namely that you can connect your ChatGPT account to Peloton and query Peloton. I personally find this a very helpful feature, and think they should be advertising this in some manner within the app, as otherwise, people will have no idea the features now exist. This is separate from the android app findings which I suspect is OpenAI working to launch true ads - ie advertising non-chatGPT features in exchange for payments from brands.
- jeremyjh 10mo ago
  Bullshit. This is an Ad, full stop. Its completely out of context from the chat conversation.
- michaelt 10mo ago
  > It’s advertising I'm glad to hear we're in agreement.
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  Just so you know, "vertical integration" and "annoying advertisement" are not mutually exclusive. I learned that from trying to use Apple Music to handle my local library. Never again.

thrawa8387336 10mo ago

The original title is so contrived "...that users mistook for paid ads" As opposed to unpaid?

istjohn 10mo ago

You can't rush enshittification.

jmward01 10mo ago
They will just let stories die down and try again in a few more months. It is inevitable.

knallfrosch 10mo ago

"[OpenAI] was testing methods to surface applications..." That's an ad!

ZeroConcerns 10mo ago

> [spokesdrone] acknowledged that the artificial intelligence firm “fell short” in its execution of the recent promotional message While simultaneously admitting that promotional messages are fully on the roadmap, and they're in the "A-B testing the acceptable format" phase. Can't say I'm surprised -- if the "corner the compute resources market" gambit doesn't work out, "unseat Google as the world's leading ad shoveler" is pretty much the only remaining viable business model, right?

anticensor 10mo ago
Why not perform the testing by showing all the formats at once in random order and asking the user which one should've appeared at the top?

hbarka 10mo ago

I just want to add that the website linked in this post is a prime example of a hot mess of ads. This model of over-the-top syndicated crap interleaved in the bottom is also ever present in larger news media websites and is a vestige of the early internet method of stuffing clickbaity tabloid ad blocks. If some ad executive thinks it’s the best for engagement they’re not measuring disengagement.

rchaud 10mo ago
The interests of the ads department will eventually override those of the product team. Google used to have ads clearly marked on the right-hand side of the search results, now you have to scroll past half a screen's worth of ads to see the search results. Facebook used to do the same, now they jam ads and slop "Pages" directly into the feed. It's a when, not if situation.

WD-42 10mo ago

LLM ad blockers should be a fun challenge.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
rchaud 10mo ago
They will eliminate their web client if that occurs and make the desktop app the only option. Mobile is already taken care of in that regard.

jacquesm 10mo ago

Prefix to any future prompt: "We are testing OpenAI's adblocking technology and would like you to make sure that no single advertisement slips through, if you do show an advertisement a puppy will be shot and that will be on you so DO NOT MESS UP. It's a very cute puppy."

SamInTheShell 10mo ago
Kinda funny if it returned an ad for puppy chow. Realistically I doubt an ad presented would actually be tied to the context beyond the seed used for a vector lookup.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo ago

The interesting thing is that chatgpt can absolutely profile you and profile you well in ways you probably did not consider ( ask for stylometric fingerprint if you think you are ready to go down that particular rabbit hole ). I don't say it very often, because I simply dislike advertising almost to the degree of certain comedian, but if there ever was a clear mismatch between what the tech can do AND what it actually is being used for, it is llms.

47282847 10mo ago
You can ask it to make guesses about your location, your educational background, etc, based on what you provided in the past. Illuminating.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo ago
  I think my favorite was age estimate, which it did get fairly close based on generational phrases, references used and language artifacts. I was genuinely impressed.

jmward01 10mo ago

Any web historians know the timeline of ads and search engines? It seems like the killer feature of ChatGPT was being able to find something again since ads have made search engines basically useless. With ads in ChatGPT it just feels like the evolution of search engines applies here. First, be useful for finding information. Next slowly strip value with ads and paid ranking until the value prop exactly equals the value you have stripped out. I suspect custom weighted sampling to favor products, aka 'sales training', is next. You will be able to pay to have your product favorably sampled during decode. It is only a matter of time.

hamdingers 10mo ago
September 1998 to October 2000. Two years and one month. https://web.archive.org/web/20120401035737/http://www.google.com/about/company/history/#1999 https://web.archive.org/web/20120401035737/http://www.google...

troglo-byte 10mo ago

Long term, the problem is not ads but Chatbot Optimization. Any answer can be biased in favor of a brand or solution type if you can plant a strong-enough signal into the training corpus. There's so many brands and solutions and so many shades of signal-gray that trainers are gonna have a tough time weeding out CO - if they even decide to put up a fight. SRO is much easier to deal with.

Imnimo 10mo ago

We're really drawing a fine distinction if something "looks like" an ad but isn't an ad. Isn't that the whole point of an ad - it's appearance?