Oh joy, it looks like OpenAI could be planning on turning ChatGPT into the ultimate advertising bot

I'm sure the one thing we can all agree on is that you can't have enough digitally curated ads. It's presumably with this in mind that OpenAI is reportedly planning to turn ChatGPT into an advertising platform. In short, ChatGPT might be on the verge of becoming the most effective ad bot the world has ever seen.

An X poster, who goes by the handle Tibor Blaho, spotted some pretty unambiguous looking references to ads in the ChatGPT Android 1.2025.329 beta. According to some observers, including Bleeping Computer, it's thought that the ads will initially be limited to ChatGPT's search functionality.

Some ChatGPT users on Reddit claim the content they are being fed on unrelated platforms is already being influenced by their ChatGPT usage, for instance ads on Instagram that are related to prompts given to ChatGPT and Sora. So, ChatGPT may be involved with serving users ads, already.

Whatever is going on currently behind the scenes, in terms of ChatGPT itself it's not hard to imagine it becoming the ultimate ad bot. OpenAI has grown a huge user base in record time, engages in intimate real-time conversations with its customer base, can record extensive personal data which can then be used to tailor ads and present them in a novel and engaging fashion, and so on.

Assuming this leak is bone fide, for now it's not certain which ChatGPT service users may be hit with ads. However, ChatGPT currently has something in the order of 800 million weekly users worldwide, of whom roughly 35 million are paid subscribers.

So, you might think OpenAI will target those free users, at least initially. That said, some paid users claim they are already being asked by ChatGPT if they want it to recommend retailers to purchase items or products that happen to be under discussion. So, we'll probably have to wait and see.

Of course, that OpenAI would consider inserting ads into the ChatGPT service—free, paid for or otherwise—really ought not come as a surprise. By way of relevant example, Google's parent company, Alphabet, generates roughly three quarters of its revenues, which totalled $350 billon last year, from ads.

Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims the company will hit revenues of $20 billion in 2025 and plans to grow that figure to hundreds of billions by 2030. That would bean awful lot of subs, even if OpenAI can deliver on its lofty promises for future ChatGPT capabilities.

So, maybe ads can fill the gap. That said, OpenAI has announced something in the region of $1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending plans in recent months. It's not clear how all of that will be paid for. But for the sake of ChatGPT's users, let's hope it won't be ads fronting up for all those GPUs, SSDs and memory chips.

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