Ad-supported ChatGPT may be coming whether we like it or not.

An ad-supported version of ChatGPT may be coming in the future, whether we like it or not.. Sarah Friar, head of finance at OpenAI, said Financial Times that the startup is analyzing the possibility of adopting a business model with advertising for its main artificial intelligence products, which will include a popular chatbot.

The executive told the above-mentioned media that OpenAI is considering the option of starting to display advertising in ChatGPT, DALL-E and other company developments. However, he clarified that A final decision on this matter has not yet been made.It is also unknown when and how such a change might be implemented.

Friar said OpenAI intends to “think carefully” about how it can approach incorporating advertising into its most important products. Aware of the possible public backlash against the decision, the person in charge of the California firm’s finances later said that while they were willing to use advertising as a new source of revenue, That’s not what they’re working on right now..

“Our business is experiencing rapid growth and we see significant opportunity within our current model. While we are open to exploring other sources of revenue in the future, we have no active plans to engage in advertising,” he said in a statement sent to Wednesday.

Despite this, Financial Times claims that the company behind ChatGPT has started Hire advertising staff and with experience working for two of the companies with the largest presence in the current online advertising market: Google and Meta.

Will we start seeing ads in ChatGPT responses?

As we mentioned at the beginning of the announcement, OpenAI says it is evaluating the possibility of adopting an advertising-based model, but has no immediate plans to do so. If this is true, the experience of using ChatGPT and other company products should be preserved. no ads some more time.

However, we also shouldn’t be surprised if Sam Altman’s people decide to start monetizing ChatGPT through advertising at some point. Especially the free version of the AI ​​chatbot. For other options, this seems less feasible, given that paid subscribers spend at least $20 per month for access to the tool’s most advanced features. But enterprise versions are much more expensive, and the companies that use them probably don’t want anything to do with advertising next to their data.

Today, OpenAI’s main revenue comes from subscription versions of ChatGPT and its language models with paid APIs. However, the Californian company faces increasingly higher costs and it’s only logical that at some point you’ll try to open yourself up to income-enhancing alternatives.

Online advertising is a dynamic business billions and billions of dollars a yearand generates most of the revenue for giants such as Google and Meta. OpenAI is trying to take its place in the world of web search with SearchGPTand with the proposed plan to develop its own browser already underway, having an in-house advertising department could be critical in the coming years.

ChatGPT’s main problem with advertising will be confidentialitytransparent. If the proposed version of the chatbot were to use user requests or searches to then serve them ads, its implementation would likely cause a lot of concern. Moreover, it would be virtually impossible to know which part of the response is “genuine” and which part is part of a hypothetical hidden advertisement.

Let’s not forget that our Sam Altman did not agree with this practice. During his recent participation at a Harvard University event, he was asked about the possibility of introducing advertising into OpenAI products, and he gave a definitive answer. “I will say that from a personal bias I hate advertising. […] I’m not saying OpenAI won’t ever consider them, but overall I don’t like them. And the addition of advertising and artificial intelligence particularly worries me,” he said.