An ongoing debate within and outside the technology community is when and how OpenAI, currently valued at $500 billion, will turn a profit. There’s one surefire way to do that. That is by using advertising. In the short term, that appears to be the plan for the AI giant, which announced this week that limited ads will be targeted to certain ChatGPT users.
OpenAI said in a blog post published Friday that it will begin testing ads in both the free and Go tiers in the United States. (The $8-per-month Go account was introduced globally on Friday.) The company is framing this as a way to maintain free access while generating revenue from people who aren’t ready to commit to a paid subscription. For the time being, the company’s more expensive paid tiers (Pro, Plus, Business, and Enterprise) do not display ads.
Ads appear at the bottom of user conversations and target trending topics. Users have some control over this situation by being able to close ads, see an explanation of why a particular ad is being shown, and turn off personalization that overrides the targeted nature of ads. The company also pledged not to serve ads to users it believes are under 18.
OpenAI says ChatGPT maintains “answer independence.” This means that even though ads are included, those ads do not influence the answers the chatbot provides to the user. The company also pledged not to sell users’ data to advertisers.
This strategy can work in two ways. For free and Go tier users, the company clearly stands to earn a lot of ad revenue. At the same time, there will always be certain users who rate apps but not ads, which can lead to increased subscriptions to more expensive accounts on the platform.
OpenAI also wants everyone to know that we’re just pasting ads into chatbots to help the world. In a blog post on Friday, the company promised that AGI’s “advertising pursuits will always support its mission” to “benefit all of humanity.”
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