Ads could be coming to ChatGPT and other OpenAI products

Some will probably hate the idea, but advertising could soon colonize ChatGPT. Sarah Friar, head of finance at OpenAI, recently confessed in statements to Financial Times what The company led by Sam Altman is effectively considering the introduction of a new business model with advertising in its main AI products (and among them will be, as it could not be otherwise, the famous ChatGPT).

According to FriarOpenAI is currently studying the possibility of overlapping ads in ChatGPT, DALL-E and other AI systems of the American company.

The eventual emergence of advertising on ChatGPT and company is in any case hypothetical in naturesince the company has not yet made a firm decision in this regard. It is also unknown when and how the ads would eventually make their way into OpenAI products in the future.

While this is by no means a trivial decision, OpenAI wants to “think carefully” about the approach it will take if ads eventually make their way into its main productsFriar admits. Furthermore, and aware that advertising could trigger a possible adverse reaction in users of OpenAI products (although it would also bring extra income to the company), Friar emphasizes that ChatGPT’s parent company is not currently working on the introduction of ads in its product portfolio (although it does not rule out doing so in the future).

«Our business is experiencing rapid growth and we see significant opportunities within our current model. While we are open to exploring other sources of income in the future, we have no active plans to get into advertising.«, emphasizes the head of finance at OpenAI.

Advertising is not a priority for OpenAI for now

Even so, and despite Friar’s point, the truth is that ChatGPT would have begun to recruit professionals assigned to the field of advertising and coming fromaccording to Financial Times, of two true titans of online advertising: Google and Meta.

OpenAI doesn’t seem to be averse to advertising, but it’s also in no rush to adopt an ad-based model, so The emergence of messages of a commercial nature on ChatGPT and company will not be in any way immediate.

If the company led by Sam Altman finally decided to introduce ads in ChatGPT, such ads would probably end up in the free version of the famous chatbot. And users of the rest of the ChatGPT variants, who pay at least $20 a month to have access to the most advanced features of this AI system, would soon be exempt from advertising, which would almost certainly not reach the corporate versions of the OpenAI chatbot.

Currently, OpenAI’s main sources of income are subscriptions and language models with paid APIs.. Even so, and as the training of its AI models entails increasingly higher costs, it is not in any way unreasonable that OpenAI is opening up to alternative avenues of income.

The online advertising market that OpenAI would be considering entering generates several billion a year, but The introduction of ads in ChatGPT and other products would also raise serious privacy concerns. And the ChatGPT user probably won’t like having their searches used in the chatbot and then being confronted with ads. for this.

It is worth noting, on the other hand, that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, does not view advertising very favorably, although he does not rule it out as a plan.either. «Personally I hate advertising. And I’m not saying that OpenAI will never consider ads, but I don’t like them in general. And the combination of advertising and AI is particularly disturbing to me,” Altman said recently at an event held at Harvard University.