OpenAI tests ads on ChatGPT’s free and Go plans in the United States

OpenAI has begun to introduce announcements in conversations with your ChatGPT assistant for US users subscribed to the cheapest plans ChatGPT Free y Go, so you will see links tagged as “sponsored” at the end of the answers.

By implementing ads in the chatbot experience, OpenAI aims to continue to offer broad access to the most powerful features of ChatGPT for anyone, to while “preserving the trust” of users to carry out important and personal tasks.

Thus, after announcing it at the beginning of the year, the technology company directed by Sam Altman has followed its roadmap and has started including ads on ChatGPT this Tuesday, which are shown personalized based on the topics being discussed in user requests and conversations.

Specifically, these advertisements are part of a initial testwhich is being carried out in USA with users over 18 years old and that affects users who use ChatGPT for free or to ChatGPT Go subscribers. However, it excludes, for the moment, users of the Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education plans of the ‘chatbot’.

As the technology company explained in a statement on its blog, these ads they do not influence the answers provided by ChatGPTthey are simply added to the end of the answer separately as a “sponsored” link. For example, if you’re asking about a recipe, users might see a sponsored kitchenware link.

In the same way, OpenAI has clarified that, despite introducing this advertising, the conversations continue to keep private and neither the information, nor the chat history, nor the memories or personal data of the user are shared with advertisers. What is shared is aggregate information about the performance of your ads, such as the number of clicks.

Following this line, users have some control over ads that appear in ChatGPT, with options to discard unwanted ones, share comments and learn why a particular ad is shown.

It should be noted that, as the company has expressed, “millions of people” use ChatGPT for their studies, work or daily decisions and, in the case of the free plan and its cheaper version, “Maintaining speed and reliability” also requires using “significant infrastructure and continued investment.”

Therefore, OpenAI intends to use the advertisements to finance this workpromoting its work to continue offering broader access to AI through higher quality free and low-cost options. At the same time, the company has detailed that it will also serve as financing for continue to improve the assistant’s intelligence and capabilities.

In this framework, for those users who do not want to see ads in their responses, they must upgrade to the ChatGPT Plus or Pro plans, paying from 20 dollars a month. They may also disable them on the Free plan in exchange for fewer free daily messages.

With all this, OpenAI has indicated that it has begun this test for its advertising approach with the objective of “learning, listening and ensuring” that the experience is appropriate for users.