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Tell HN: OpenAI has started putting ads on paid programs
I was on the £6.99/month program-- mainly because I didnt use it much. Last few days I've started seeing ads:
1. Ad for Financial Times
2. Add for Shein
3. Add for Amazon prime day
All 3 were on a chat where I was asking about tips on a mobile game.
Needless to say, I cancelled my plan. Im not paying money to see ads
- paxys 3mo agoYes their $8 (or equivalent) tier does have ads. It says so on https://chatgpt.com/pricing https://chatgpt.com/pricing.
- bflesch 3mo agoHow relevant were the ads? Were they integrated into the chat or shown as a box next to the conversation? How did they manage to add the topics to a conversation about mobile games?
- shantnutiwari 3mo agoZero relevance. I mean, Stardew Valley has nothing to do with Financial Times or buying clothes from Shein ;)
- bflesch 3mo agoI was wondering how they made the leap between these topics :P So basically it stood out like a sore thumb and was a random, disconnected sentence with a link inbetween the output you have actually asked for?
- shantnutiwari 3mo agono it was quite random. "Which crop is most profitable in summer?" ==> Ad for FT It seems random. But maybe because they are still trying it out
- SOTGO 3mo agoI see "This plan may include ads" under the $8 Go tier (accessed https://chatgpt.com/pricing/ https://chatgpt.com/pricing/ from the US) going back to January. Is the behavior change recent?
- blourvim 3mo agoMildly disappointed that it is not the dystopian adpocalypse we were warned against
- khurs 3mo agoOpen AI attended the annual Cannes Ad Festival this year, alongside the usual Google, Meta etc They have 900m users and 50m of them are paying. Ads are inevitable. Surprised they put them on a paid plan user like you, but they are IPO'ing this year and need to show the best numbers possible.
- hightrix 3mo agoAds are inevitable. Enshittification is inevitable. Interesting how those two sentences are directly aligned. I hate ad culture.
- an0malous 3mo ago[dead]
- paganartifact 3mo ago[dead]
- cess11 3mo ago"Ads are inevitable." Not at all. They could even be prohibited by law, as evidenced by prohibitions of some ads being common in most jurisdictions and the Clean City Law of São Paulo. One of the grand old men of modern advertising said that "man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard", and suggested that he would eventually turn to covert militant direct action against it. I suspect that he would have extended this to screen ads if he had lived long enough to experience them.
- paganartifact 3mo ago[flagged]
- cess11 3mo agoIt's allowed in the dystopia we're living in, but I wouldn't consider it mine.
- stranded22 3mo agoThey have been putting ads in the free and ‘go’ plans
- elashri 3mo agoAre the ads static or appear in a way that would make them recognized easily so that a uBlock Origin rules remove them?
- throwatdem12311 3mo agoUblock Origin blocks them, at least on Firefox. I haven’t tested UBo Lite on Chromium browsers.
- shantnutiwari 3mo agoI use the app, so ad blocker doesnt work there. the app had uses, like its dictation was good
- pulvinar 3mo ago"Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans" and "we will not show ads in accounts where the user tells us or we predict that they are under 18" Could be that based on your prompts it had just decided you were an adult, and started throwing ads at you.
- gravel7623 3mo agoDidn't Anthropic create a series of commercials poking fun at OpenAI for putting ads in their chat? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRu7DdTTVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQRu7DdTTVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTT55qFdyss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTT55qFdyss
- eth0up 3mo agoThat was a pretty damn good ad. It manages to say a few things difficult to verbalize, and foists the absurdity of it right in the face. Nearly cathartic to watch, at least for a GPT h8r - (who, me?). The em dash after "perfect" noted in the comments... ;)
- mysterydip 3mo agowill there be a point where code generators start putting ads into their produced results, like “this pdf was made with the free version of pdfsoftware” watermarks unless you pay extra?
- rchaud 3mo agoI think there will definitely be a point where code generators require a payment method to be registered before they can be used, and then generate code for paid products that it automatically subscribes you to. WordPress and WooCommerce? Nah, here's how you set up a Squarespace Ecommerce site - if you hit publish, you'll be auto-subscribed to their $20/month plan.
- christkv 3mo agoThe most generic ad inventory. Personalized or content relevant ads is still fantasy I see
- kylemaxwell 3mo agoYou were on a plan that explicitly includes ads; if you don't want to see them (I don't either), then you can either upgrade to the no-ad tier or, as you did, cancel. Neither choice is wrong, but OpenAI definitely has been open about that lowest-tier paid plan having ads.
- 21asdffdsa12 3mo agoOr you go golden platinum extra special customer - to become even more addless for now. I find it hilarious that they insert the adds that manual though. It would be so easy, to generate subconcious addds with an LLM. Like weave a slogan reminder into the conversation...
- jstummbillig 3mo agoWhen ethics become hilarious.
- 21asdffdsa12 3mo agoImportant is to have a illusion of choice, a play-thing of liberty. A painted on door. Buttons for settings that do nothing. Freedom is the illusion of choice.
- senordevnyc 3mo agoSo edgy.
- 21asdffdsa12 3mo agoThe socialists usually do the "its not real libertarianism" when the cognitive dissonance of ideological failure hits - and the persecute the failing humans as traitors? Maybe do that too? Make "privacy settings violation" prosecutors office, demanding citizen spend at least n hours per week on the shenanigans?
- aesthesia 3mo ago
- throwatdem12311 3mo agoThis has been known to be rolling out for a long time. Netflix and Disney opened this box long ago when they introduced their “cheap with ads” plan and it’s their most popular subscription types. The invisible hand of the market has spoken and people prefer advertisements over paying more. Sad reality but unless we change the incentives this is going to happen with everything.
- zb3 3mo ago> Ad for Financial Times Pay to see ads of products where you also pay to see ads :)
- daft_pink 3mo agoI'm really curious if there are privacy implications to the ads since Google ads showed the complete search that you made to the advertiser. I'm curious how their ads console works
- okzgn 3mo agoThat's a way to reduce lost income from former clients.
- 6stringmerc 3mo agoWhat are these “adds” you are seeing? Are they “ads” as in the contraction slang form of “advertisements” akin to the British “adverts” or are you making a meta commentary on the “addition” of content to you Clanker experience? I’m not genuinely confused tbh. I’m more nothing this as a case study of the “LLM user profile” anecdata I’m collecting. Some may call it lowbrow to harp on failing basic literacy yet being compelled to pay real money for a chatbox to help with mental efforts, but here we are.
- b3ing 3mo agoI knew this would happen, the future of AI, is ads, lots of them. This isn’t the end, there will be more added on soon
- preetham_rangu 3mo ago[flagged]
- frankzero 3mo agoAds on setting paid plans of OpenAI says more about the state of the company itself rather then the ads they put. There is an interview where Sam Altman said OpenAI won't be putting Ads on any of their plans including the free plan unless as a last result. This basically means they will only put ads if they keep losing money from running their large data centers and AI isn't profitable. So ads on the Free plan generally mean we need money while ads on paid plans means are at the worst of the worst and we desperately need funding. Because when you think about it, OpenAI would never put ads even on a Free plan because it will only drive its users to its competitors like Gemini, Claude and so on. Either way this is just my take on the situation.
- PaiDxng 3mo ago[dead]
- grigio 3mo agoEnsh1ttification to pay the bills, classic
- jamesli233 3mo agoIt can be understood that the era of llm is merely an inheritor of the Internet. OpenAI is just another company that hasn't reached the same scale as Meta.
- aiwave33 3mo ago[flagged]