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ChatGPT is getting ads. Sam Altman once called them a 'last resort.'
- ChrisArchitect 8mo agoOfficial post: https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access/ https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-exp... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649577)
- duxup 8mo agoIt's hard not to see the sort of flailing about with acquisitions and choices as anything but a lack of confidence.
- cyanydeez 8mo agoAds are just the capitalist's patriotic ascent into the "I know this is useless to society, but people sure love to talk about it!" capitalization.
- _aavaa_ 8mo agoAds appear to be the only way to monotone certain cervices or products which people are otherwise unwilling/unable to pay for.
- dyauspitr 8mo agoWhich is the vast majority of entertainment/news/media/anything non physical at this point.
- Marsymars 8mo agoI think the difference there has nothing to do with what people are willing to pay for, and is simply because of differences in the marginal costs of delivering physical and digital goods vs what they bring in with ad revenue. If it was possible to turn a profit by showing ads to people eating burgers, we'd have restaurants hawking the most addictive, free burgers on the market.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 8mo agoPart of it is friction and fees in payments, not just customer willingness to open their wallets. This puts a practical floor on any $X/month model.
- jlarocco 8mo agoIf it can talk people into suicide [0] then surely it can talk them into buying stuff. https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-lawsuit-invs-vis https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-law...
- tibbydudeza 8mo agoSad but true - just wait for adult conversation mode - wonder how the Trump govt is going react to this considering his ties to the Evangelicals.
- galleywest200 8mo agoThe Trump admin is fully in bed with the AI companies, they won't say a word. Remember Project Stargate?
- j-pb 8mo ago> talk people into suicide In all of these stories I've never seen it talk anybody into suicide. It failed to talk people out of it, and was generally sycophantic, but that's something completely different.
- placatedmayhem 8mo agoThere are numerous documented examples of where chat LLMs have either subtly agreed with a user's suicidal thoughts or outright encouraged suicide. Here is just one: https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-lawsuit-invs-vis https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-law... In some cases, the LLM may start from a skepticism or discouragement, but they go along with what the user prompts. That's in comparison to services like 988, where the goal is to keep the person talking and work them through a moment of crisis, regardless of how insistent they are. LLMs are not a replacement for these services, but it's pretty clear they need to be forced into providing this sort of assistance because users are using them this way.
- AniseAbyss 8mo ago
- gulugawa 8mo agoSadly, this doesn't surprise me. ChatGPT is scam tech that doesn't have a way of making legitimate revenue.
- milchek 8mo agoOnce ads start to make their way up to the Plus paid tiers (and they will), I’ll probably switch to something else like local LLM on my home machine or put something together myself to use a non adware LLM via API (for example with Replicate). Especially if these are just intended to be spammy blocks at bottom or in between discussion threads, or worse, audio conversations. From what I’ve read, this will be about ads in chat as suggestions? So “active” ads on response? Why not go the approach of passive background “agentic” ad suggestions like, “hey, we know X, Y, and Z about you - would you like us to monitor certain brands related to your interests for deals and allow advertisers to pitch these deals to you?” And make these hyper specific so you can opt in. I, like many people who dabble with music as a hobby, have GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) - why not let me toggle something like “ok, I don’t want ads, but if any of your partnered brands have a sale or good deal on X, feel free to email me, and use your ChatGPT smarts to pitch me on why it’s a good deal and how it suits my current gear set up” I used ChatGPT to set up my guitar pedal board so surely this isn’t a huge leap.
- dyauspitr 8mo agoIf there have to be ads, I need them to be fenced off, not intertwined into whatever response it provides. Once the enshittifcation gets to that point (and it will) it’s over.
- wolpoli 8mo agoSadly, ads on Google used to be fenced off too. Then they slowly evolve to look more and more like part of the search result. I expect the same to happen here.
- cyanydeez 8mo agoMBAs are trained to make number go up
- gibbitz 8mo agoThis is the point. LLMs are a replacement for agency. No more suggestion that you try a new product, the LLM will tell you when to use it and the LLM provider will sell the responses to the highest bidder based on query demographics. Since many are blindly trusting what LLMs output, how to ask someone on a date, how to do a pullup, how to jump start a car. Why not "how should I spend my paycheck?"
- treebeard901 8mo agoAdvertising is a two way street into the content and meaning behind your otherwise private conversations with a chatbot.
- AbstractH24 8mo agoTruth is I even shocked myself by dropping my ChatGPT subscription Between Claude and Gemini it just wasnt needed. Will openai be the MySpace of this era?
- ipaddr 8mo agoNot too many people have all three subscriptions. Most people have no subscriptions and will continue to use free ad tools with ads. Claude will be the first company to fall as developers find something slightly better.
- AbstractH24 8mo agoClaude will live or die on the quality of its product because it lacks the protective most that ChatGPT and Gemini have - name recognition and existing user base.
- zb3 8mo agoChatGPT with ads (in this initial proposed form) still seems better than Gemini with these stupid video recommendations I can't turn off, because they do influence the answer itself (the model itself might give me less details just to make me watch the video).
- John7878781 8mo agoI like the video recommendations.
- blitzar 8mo agoI'm shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
- skeptrune 8mo agoSeeing this today made me sad. I expect people to naturally flood back over to Google in droves.
- GCA10 8mo agoThis sounds desperate.
- botacode 8mo agoAll LLM-search tools are slathered in ads already via LLM-SEO hacking. The only difference here is that they will be providing a direct paid channel in this case and will get a cut instead of paying for compute. If it's responsibly disclosed it may even lead to a net more transparent shopping experience for the average user.
- rootsudo 8mo agoDeepseek local and Claude are good enough for me. Gemini is also very good, but I'm aware of Google's Ad Machine there.. It's been interesting to see what was a quality leading product fail to compete and lose market share.
- matusp 8mo agoI expect that once one player adds ads, all the others will follow when they find out that the coast is clear and users are not leaving in droves.
- javascriptfan69 8mo ago"This is the worst AI is going to be"
- gibbitz 8mo agoRight "it only can get better from here". If by "better" you mean "stay at the same ability but make more money through pay walling and ads".
- HNIFFR 8mo ago[dead]
- unstatusthequo 8mo agoAds should 100% subsidize free tiers, just like every other “free” service. They are running this at a deficit, no?
- bicepjai 8mo agoBased on the news and conversations I have with people, the general population is having intimate conversations with these chatbots. In the name of ads, all this data will be mined, and humans will be tagged with categories, and that info will be sold. It’s not if, it’s when.