Getting ready for the introduction of advertising on ChatGPT For now it will only be seen in the United States, but it appears to be the future of the industry

Recently OpenAI announced the introduction of advertising on ChatGPT. The initial testing phase will begin in the coming weeks in the United States and will involve some versions of the service: ads will be shown to users who use the free version of the chatbot and ChatGPT Go, the most affordable plan offered by the company. Those who use the Plus or Pro versions will continue to use ChatGPT without advertising.

Ads will appear at the end of the chatbot’s responses, that is, within the conversation window. The company has clarified, however, that they will not be integrated into the text generated by the tool: individual ads will instead be shown separately and clearly labeled, so as not to confuse them with the answers provided by ChatGPT.

Does OpenAI need money?

For OpenAI, the introduction of advertising is a way to increase revenue and support the costs required for the development and operation of its artificial intelligence systems. This decision is also linked to recent changes in the company’s structure: last October, OpenAI moved from being a non-profit organization to a company operating for profit. Advertising therefore represents part of a broader strategy designed to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the service.

Every day, in fact, millions of people use the generative artificial intelligence systems of OpenAI and other organizations. However, only a small portion of these users choose to pay to access more exclusive features: the majority simply use the free versions of chatbots – something that represents a major problem for companies in the sector, given that the development and maintenance of the language models underlying chatbots are very expensive.

Very few users pay to use AI

One of the main reasons why only a few people choose to pay to use certain chatbots is the price: often, even the cheapest paid plan can be quite expensive for those who use these tools only occasionally. Not surprisingly, those who subscribe to a paid plan are mainly users who are interested in specific features. Most people (estimated at over 90%), on the other hand, use the free version, which in practice is already sufficient to meet many everyday needs. With the introduction of advertising, therefore, OpenAI and other companies in the sector aim to monetize precisely this large segment of users who effectively do not pay for the service they receive.

The introduction of advertising on ChatGPT is nonetheless a very significant development for the sector – not by chance, the topic has always been approached with great caution by the company’s management. The presence of ads within artificial intelligence–based chatbots raises issues related to user trust. Sam Altman himself has repeatedly emphasized that he is aware of these risks, especially in the case of personalized ads. For this reason, the company makes no secret of wanting to proceed cautiously, clearly showing when certain content is advertising in nature and offering users tools to decide whether and how to receive ads.

Advertising is the future of the AI industry, maybe

OpenAI, however, is not an isolated case. The integration of advertising into conversational artificial intelligence systems is an increasingly common hypothesis among industry insiders. Google, for example, has also announced similar tests – in this case, the goal is to show commercial offers while the user is talking with a chatbot and considering a potential purchase.

On ChatGPT as well, advertising content will theoretically be linked to the topics discussed in the respective conversation. In other words, the type of ad shown will depend on what the user is talking about at that moment. It remains the case, however, that people will have a certain degree of control: it will be possible to disable ad personalization and delete at any time the data used to select them.