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OpenAI to begin testing ads on ChatGPT in the U.S.
- Aerbil313 9mo agoThis marks the day advertising entered a new era and got extremely efficient. Expect all other LLM vendors to follow soon. If they don't, they will lose.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo agoSource: https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access/ https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-exp... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649577)
- jryio 9mo agoRemember the internet before algorithmic ads and cross site tracking? We will remember this moment of LLM usage for the years to come as we are irreparably spun by advertisers in our most intimate and private 1:1 conversations with these AIs
- silveira 9mo agoLet the enshittification begin. Then you move to the paid plan, then they move ads to the paid plan, then you move to the premium-extra plan, etc.
- barbazoo 9mo agoNot "ads" in the traditional sense but no one can tell me they won't use it to steer people toward whoever is paying their bills.
- layer8 9mo agoWhat would be the metric by which they bill for it?
- barbazoo 9mo agoInteresting, looking at it from that side. How does it work with traditional real world ads, billboards for example. I'd expect them to have a similar challenge. Not whether the ad was put in front of people, but the high level impact of the whole campaign. How would advertisers know whether OpenAI even applied the ad to the paid for number of people's conversations, I don't know.
- satvikpendem 9mo agoThis was posted in Show HN today [0]. Looks like queries just query ChatGPT themselves for whatever terms they want to track and then correlate revenue with that. But ChatGPT will probably do it like affiliate links, where there is a tracking parameter or cookie that identifies that it came from ChatGPT. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642490
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoCancelling my subscription today
- simianwords 9mo agoThere are no ads on subscriptions.. other than go.
- colesantiago 9mo agoSo you want ads then?
- layer8 9mo agoYeah, it’s a scandal that they’re depriving paying users of ads. ;)
- midtake 9mo agoI just canceled Plus.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoDitto!
- pseudosavant 9mo agoThe writing has unfortunately been on the wall for this, especially for free users. They want you to make choices that are in their economic interests. The biggest tell for me lately is that if you ask ChatGPT about products or even specific items on Amazon, it will only return links to companies that partner with OpenAI. None of the companies they currently partner (affiliate link basically) with are ones I prefer to buy from. It has made ChatGPT way less useful for this kind of research now. I certainly have reasons to distrust all their shopping links.
- timpera 9mo agoTo be fair, Amazon seems to be blocking ChatGPT. They're also in legal disputes with other AI companies that help their users to browse Amazon's website (https://www.perplexity.ai/fr/hub/blog/bullying-is-not-innovation https://www.perplexity.ai/fr/hub/blog/bullying-is-not-innova...).
- simianwords 9mo agoI'm getting links from amazon for shopping here.
- oidar 9mo agoForget about blocking ChatGPT, they block search from users. I can't count the number of times I'd had to go back to search engine to find a specific product on Amazon because they don't surface the product with the exact name I'm looking for... Last one was Unite 7Second Detangler. They only returned sponsored products, but go to Google (site:amazon.com Unite 7Second Detangler)and search - boom within the first five spots (and way cheaper than the products shown in Amazon's search). Don't trust Amazon search people! Search Amazon from another search engine.
- m4ck_ 9mo ago>Mission alignment: Our mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity; our pursuit of advertising is always in support of that mission and making AI more accessible. Advertising and marketing kills humanity, these should be among the first industries that AI eliminates; kinda getting mixed messages here. You'd think the tech that supposedly is going to make money and all work irrelevant could figure out a way to make money without resorting to being yet another mechanism to deliver ads.
- simianwords 9mo ago> Advertising and marketing kills humanity No it doesn't. Please stope the hyperbole. Its literally just advertisements and people have the agency to choose to buy products.
- miltonlost 9mo ago"just" advertisements when ChatGPT is designed to be sycophantic and manipulative
- simianwords 9mo agoNo its not designed to be that way. I literally can't get ChatGPT to agree with me on 5.2 with many things. Its just not possible.. I'd request you to give me an example of it being sycophantic and encouraging delusional behaviour (as a shareable link).
- OAIToTheMoon 9mo ago[flagged]
- miltonlost 9mo agohttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/chatgpt-wrote-goodnight-moon-suicide-lullaby-for-man-who-later-killed-himself/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/chatgpt-wrote-go... Everyone who works at chatgpt has blood on their hands
- aeon_ai 9mo ago| Long-term value: We do not optimize for time spent in ChatGPT. We prioritize user trust and user experience over revenue. The unspoken part -- This holds true so long as revenue is at least equal to costs, and speaks nothing about whether user trust and user experience is optimized over profit.
- invokestatic 9mo agoI’ve been paying for Google Workspace for my custom domain for years basically just so I can use Gmail. For just $7 more dollars a month, I upgraded my plan to access Gemini Pro, which has guaranteed enterprise-grade privacy controls. I think this is currently the best value platform for anyone who values their privacy for LLMs. If Apple and the DoD trust Google’s internal controls, I do too.
- barbazoo 9mo agoThis too sounds like an ad.
- josefritzishere 9mo agoThe Enshittification curve is analagous to Moore's law.
- netdur 9mo agothey have been doomed for a while, it is just a matter of time, but honestly i like them better than the claude provider, if they can make openai profitable, that would be good for all of us, we don't want a world where gemini is the only winner or the chinese take over
- still-learning 9mo agoIs there any hope that they wont let any of the ads logic into the rl / pre-training? I'd like for my paid ChatGPT model to offer an unbiased source of truth on what the best products are.
- simianwords 9mo agoI wonder if they will buff the free tier with higher rate limits because the ads will be able to sustain them
- rvz 9mo agoRealistically nothing is going to happen. In fact this propels OpenAI to $1TN in valuation. Threads introduced ads and almost no-one cared. This will be the exact same result. If you don't want the ads, then pay $8 for ChatGPT Go.
- Analemma_ 9mo agoYeah, the predictions of doom are so wildly misplaced. There's even a sibling comment on this thread saying, "When Google introduced ads [note: in 2000], it made the product objectively worse." Sure, and did Google die as a result? Or did it subsequently go from a startup with modest revenue in a company with a multi-trillion dollar market cap and $100 billion in quarterly revenue?
- 101008 9mo agoChatGPT Go is going to include ads as well. "In the coming weeks, we’re also planning to start testing ads in the U.S. for the free and Go tiers, so more people can benefit from our tools with fewer usage limits or without having to pay."
- dylanlacom 9mo agoIronic to show ads only to your users with the least spending power. Me thinks this will not last. Once the ads get “good enough” they will be everywhere.
- pseudosavant 9mo agoWhen ads were introduced into Google, it objectively made the search product worse. You no longer saw what they thought would be the most relevant result. You literally saw Google's most profitable (it is an auction) result. If we apply that kind of thinking to chat LLMs, it means instead of getting the most relevant tokens, you'll be shown the most profitable tokens. Maybe the most relevant tokens will be below the fold (like unpaid search results) now.
- pseudosavant 9mo agoJust wait for the image generators that have paid product placement like TV and movies do now. You ask for an edit of a photo and it changes an ad in the background to a different company. This idea seems awful, and also so obvious that it is going to happen.
- satvikpendem 9mo agoGoing to? It happened 20 years ago already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Force_is_with_Cristal_Beer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Force_is_with_Cristal_Beer
- amitav1 9mo ago> "it objectively made the search product worse" I would disagree, because without the advertising there probably would be no Google.
- vinyl7 9mo agoArguably Google could go the way of AOL and no one would notice
- satvikpendem 9mo agoThis is probably the funniest comment I've seen this week. Yes, I'm sure all 3 billion users of Google products wouldn't notice.
- Imnimo 9mo ago>ChatGPT’s responses will not be influenced by ads I don't see why I should believe this.
- simianwords 9mo agoDo you believe google search results are influenced by ads?
- Imnimo 9mo agoYeah, both directly and indirectly. Over time, "sponsored links" became more and more visually indistinguishable form organic results, and advertising incentives drove changes to the search algorithm.
- amarcheschi 9mo agoConsidering that I have reported a Google ad that I deem political and Google does not, that I'm going to appeal because as a eu citizen I can do so, that they'll most likely refuse the appeal and I'm ready to bring this to the relevant Italian authority, yes A few days ago I read a newspaper article about Israel's government using ads to spread its propaganda. In eu, you have to follow some rules if you want to do so. These rules are not followed. Combined with the fact that ads might not be distinguished easily by average users, I feel that Google search results can be influenced by ads
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- unethical_ban 9mo agoOh, this is so benign and appropriate. This will never escalate, and OpenAI is governed by strict privacy laws and audited by the public so we can trust they won't ever change their policy or have bias injected into their models.
- klipklop 9mo agoIt took many years and billions in profit before Google enshitified. OpenAI? Almost at birth.
- FeteCommuniste 9mo agoToday's userbase is already thoroughly inured to enshittified tech, so why waste time carefully inching your way to the bottom of the shitpit rather than diving straight down? There's money to be made, baby.
- Palmik 9mo agoWhat are you talking about? Google came out in 1998 and introduced ads in search results in 2000
- satvikpendem 9mo agoCurious how the economics are going to go. ChatGPT has close to a billion MAU and they're losing money even with subscriptions. Meanwhile Google with Gemini is catching up (although I've seen reports that Gemini is also testing ads in their chats, especially without disclosing it's an ad, by linking to Google Shopping [0]). The Google example might show how it might appear: > Since you are context-switching between multiple projects, you cannot afford to work from a kitchen table with poor ergonomics. These tools make 2-week "sprints" viable: > Reliable Productivity A portable second monitor is essential for keeping your Slack/Jira open on one side while you code on the other. > The ASUS ZenScreen is the gold standard for nomads. It's ultra-thin and connects via a single USB-C, meaning you can set up a "pro office" in any Airbnb in under 60 seconds. > Redundant Connectivity Don't trust Airbnb Wi-Fi for your "Impact Doc" delivery or lead syncs. > The Netgear Nighthawk M6 provides a dedicated 5G connection. It’s your insurance policy against a bad router in a New Orleans rental house. > Audio Privacy In urban areas like Chicago or New Orleans, street noise is a constant risk during meetings. > The Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones have the best background noise cancellation for your microphone. Your manager will hear your voice clearly, even if there's a siren outside your window. Incidentally, I just saw on Show HN an AI SEO tool [1], wonder if OpenAI will also include similar features in their ad platform. Maybe we'll just type in our questions and it'll spit out stats and graphs itself, now that is more likely. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46533480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46533480 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642490
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- zkitty 9mo agoFor those who blocked by pay wall: Here is their original announcement tweet. https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2012223373489614951?s=20 https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2012223373489614951?s=20
- PyWoody 9mo agohttps://xcancel.com/OpenAI/status/2012223373489614951 https://xcancel.com/OpenAI/status/2012223373489614951 For those who are blocked by Twitter.
- lasgawe 9mo agoOne way or another, ChatGPT-like platforms provide ads.