ChatGPT users are going to be hit with targeted ads

A conversation in progress — both inside and outside the tech community — is about how and when OpenAI, which is currently worth $500 billionwill make money. Well, there is one surefire way to do this, and that is through advertising. In the short term, that seems to be the AI ​​giant’s plan, as it announced this week that limited ads are targeting some ChatGPT users.

In a blog post Published on Friday, OpenAI said it will begin testing ads in the US for both its free and Go tiers. (Go accounts, which cost $8 a month, were introduced worldwide on Friday.) The company bills it as a way to maintain free access while also generating revenue from people who aren’t ready to commit to a paid subscription. For now, the company’s most expensive paid tiers — Pro, Plus, Business and Enterprise — won’t receive ads.

Ads will appear at the bottom of a user’s chat and will target the conversation topic. Users will have some control over this situation as they will be able to decline ads, see explanations of why certain ads are being shown, and also turn off personalization, which should remove the targeted nature of ads. The company has also pledged not to serve ads to users it believes are under 18.

OpenAI says ChatGPT will maintain “response independence,” meaning that despite ad integration, those ads won’t influence the responses the chatbot offers to users. The company has also promised not to sell user data to advertisers.

This strategy could pay off in two ways. For users of the free and Go tiers, the company will obviously make a significant amount of ad revenue. At the same time, there will inevitably be some users who appreciate the app but don’t appreciate the ads, which could lead to an increase in subscriptions to the platform’s more expensive accounts.

OpenAI also wants everyone to know that it is sticking ads on its chatbot just to help people. In its blog post on Friday, the company promised that “the pursuit of advertising always supports” its mission: that AGI “benefits all of humanity.”