OpenAI “Plans to Start Testing Ads in Coming Weeks” on ChatGPT

As finance experts start to raise the alarm that OpenAI could run out of money in a matter of months, the artificial intelligence giant has just revealed its intention to start testing advertising on its ChatGPT platform in coming weeks.

The news comes as OpenAI also launched a new ad-supported paid tier, ChatGPT Go, in a bid to diversify revenue streams and coax more people from free.

As they announced their intention to start testing ads on ChatGPT’s free tier and new ChatGPT Go tier, the team also outlined their pitch to consumers and marketers alike. In a blog post published late on Friday 16 Jan, they shared details of their approach and underlined how they hope to maintain the trust they’ve built up among users.

​The blog reads: “People trust ChatGPT for many important and personal tasks, so as we introduce ads, it’s crucial we preserve what makes ChatGPT valuable in the first place. That means you need to trust that ChatGPT’s responses are driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising. You need to know that your data and conversations are protected and never sold to advertisers. And we need to keep a high bar and give you control over your experience so you see truly relevant, high-quality ads – and can turn off personalization if you want.”

In a further section, they broke down their “ads principles”:

• "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.
• Answer independence: Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimised based on what's most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labelled.
• Conversation privacy: We keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers, and we never sell your data to advertisers.
• Choice and control: You control how your data is used. You can turn off personalisation, and you can clear the data used for ads at any time. We’ll always offer a way to not see ads in ChatGPT, including a paid tier that’s ad-free.
• Long-term value: We do not optimise for time spent in ChatGPT. We prioritise user trust and user experience over revenue."
  

While the ads have not yet been launched, they say that in the test they will place ads at the bottom of ChatGPT responses where they see an appropriate product that can be linked to the conversation. They say that ads will be clearly labelled, that they can be dismissed by users and that they will not show ads in accounts where the user has told them (or is assumed to be by the algorithm) under 18 and ads should not appear near topics “like health, mental health or politics”.

Their announcement specifically mentions small businesses and ‘emerging brands’, pitching AI advertising as a platform to ‘level the playing field’ in much the same way that social media ad platforms have been targeted.

OpenAI closed out their announcement by inviting feedback from users and pushing back against the recent negative press around their revenue model.

“Our enterprise and subscription businesses are already strong, and we believe in having a diverse revenue model where ads can play a part in making intelligence more accessible to everyone,” they said.