All day, I see ads. Ads when I scroll social feeds, ads when I search Google, and ads on every website I go to. You’re looking at some ads on this website right now (hopefully they aren’t too annoying). I’ve lived to tell the tale — and so have you.
OpenAI announced on Friday that it will start testing ads in ChatGPT for US users on its free and Go tiers, something that had been rumored for a while. If you’re a brand or advertiser, this might be exciting news, but I think most of us who are merely ChatGPT users are not thrilled.
There are a few obvious problems here. But I think we can say “eh” to most of them.
Problem 1: Ads can be annoying! I agree! But as previously mentioned, we are all used to seeing ads everywhere at all times. It’s just the constant buzz of white noise in every online experience.
But, eh: Since OpenAI is first testing this as a freemium model, sure, you can get rid of the ads if you pay. We’re already dealing with that in a ton of other services like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, and YouTube. I pay for all of those because I’ve decided the ads are annoying enough to pay extra to skip. (Actually, I don’t pony up for ad-free Hulu. I made the calculation I don’t watch it enough to make it worth it. On the other hand, I do play enough solitaire on my phone that I ponied up for the ad-free version.)
Problem 2: It’s a trust issue. Can we trust ChatGPT to give “real” answers rather than ads when we ask it to recommend a product or service, even if it’s also running ads?
But, eh: I think people are already used to understanding things like Google search results with ads where there’s a mix of organic and sponsored results. If I ask ChatGPT to help me revive my wilting monstera plant, and it shows me an ad for Miracle-Gro plant food at the bottom, will I be confused? Probably not because I’ve seen this kind of thing before on Google and social feeds. The mockups OpenAI shared flag to me pretty clearly what’s an ad and what isn’t.
Problem 3: If ChatGPT is in the advertising biz, then it’s subject to the pressures of brands and corporations that pay for those ads.
But, eh: OK, this one is actually real. Advertisers can and will exert pressure on platforms, broadcasters, publishers, and any other venues where their ads appear. They are powerful in that way!
But hear me out: This can actually have a kind of normalizing effect, in a positive way, especially when we’re thinking about something like a huge AI company.
Consider the case of an outlier event: In 2022, when Elon Musk first took over Twitter/X. Advertisers fled when the platform was deluged with hateful content, and it actually caused X to have to change its ways to woo them back. When we consider all the wildly terrifying things that a platform with immense global power like OpenAI can do, it’s actually kind of a good thing to be hemmed in by the middle-of-the-road, safe values and standards of the Coca-Cola Company or other big, would-be US-based advertisers. It means you can’t make your tech product so problematic that Walmart doesn’t want to be associated with it.
Problem 4: ChatGPT, a wonderful product that operated with a clean design, is now just another victim of enshittification!
But, eh: Buddy, if you’re a huge fan of ChatGPT and the purity of the beautiful, human, internet, I don’t know what to tell you. Do you also love swimming, but hate water? Pick a side!
Look, am I excited to have one more place to be annoyed by ads? No. But I also feel like this isn’t the worst thing to happen with AI — not even the worst thing this week. Although I would like to reserve the right to change my mind on this if it turns out to be really awful later down the line. Gotta hedge here.
