OpenAI has announced plans to begin testing advertisements within ChatGPT in the coming weeks, primarily targeting adult users in the United States on the Free and newly introduced Go tiers. These sponsored products and services will appear directly below conversation windows and will be clearly labelled to ensure they are distinct from organic AI responses. The company emphasized that these advertisements will not influence the accuracy or nature of the answers ChatGPT generates, as the system remains optimized for user helpfulness.
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To maintain a high standard of user experience, OpenAI has established several key restrictions for its advertising platform:
- Sensitive Topics: Ads will not appear during conversations involving health, mental well-being, or current politics.
- Age Restrictions: Users under the age of 18 will not be shown any advertisements.
- Data Privacy: OpenAI states it will not share or sell personal user data to advertisers.
- User Control: Individuals can disable ad personalization, clear the data used for sponsored responses, or dismiss ads entirely, though dismissing an ad will prompt a request for feedback.
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Alongside the advertising update, OpenAI is bringing its ChatGPT Go subscription to the U.S. market for $8 per month. Positioned as a low-cost alternative to the $20 Plus plan, the Go tier provides 10 times higher rate limits for messages, images, and file uploads than the free version, as well as an expanded context window for better conversation memory. However, unlike the premium Plus and Pro tiers, the Go subscription will include advertisements.
This strategic pivot toward an ad-supported model reflects the industry-wide challenge of managing the high costs associated with model training and inference. While OpenAI’s long-term goal remains focused on paid services, these new “conversational” ad experiences represent an effort to find sustainable revenue streams for its massive user base.
