Some ChatGPT users say they’ve spotted what look like in-app ads, including a prompt that read “Shop for home and groceries. Connect Target.” A recent BleepingComputer report also pointed to a leaked internal test suggesting OpenAI was experimenting with ads.
OpenAI says none of that is true. Head of ChatGPT Nick Turley wrote on X that “there are no live tests for ads” and that the screenshots circulating online are either inaccurate or misinterpreted. Chief Researcher Officer Mark Chen added that the company disabled a feature that might have looked like an ad, but wasn’t one.
Still, the question hangs in the air. OpenAI is burning cash at a historic scale, has hired aggressively for an internal ads team, and sits on one of the most engaged user bases in tech. There are billions of dollars of incentive for the company to eventually flip the switch. Meanwhile, its biggest rival Google $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.48% ) has already begun pumping ads into its AI products, bringing the search giant’s core business straight into the LLM era.
There’s also a reputation angle. Sam Altman said last year that ads inside an AI assistant would be “uniquely unsettling” and something OpenAI would consider only as a last resort. And many argue Google’s ad saturation is part of what created the opening for ChatGPT in the first place.
But history is not on the “ad-free forever” side. Products that launch without ads often end up with them once companies realize users are too hooked to leave. Cable TV, streaming services, smart TVs, refrigerators, cars — the list is long. Whether ChatGPT joins it is a question of timing, not possibility.