Here we go: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman once called it a 'last resort', but ChatGPT is about to get stuffed with ads

OpenAI has announced that ads will soon be appearing in ChatGPT for both free users and those who subscribe to the lowest paid tier for the LLM, called ChatGPT Go ($8 a month). A trial run is set to start in the US "in the coming weeks" before ads are rolled out globally.

The move comes with some world-class verbiage from OpenAI about how this isn't about revenue, but making "powerful AI accessible to everyone." The company goes on to outline its principles around ads, saying that ChatGPT's responses will remain "driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising" and that user conversations and data will be "protected and never sold to advertisers." Fair enough, though I'm not sure I'd trust anything OpenAI says.

There's some more PR guff about how "conversational interfaces create possibilities for people to go beyond static messages and links" and the exciting promise that "soon you might see an ad and be able to directly ask the questions you need to make a purchase decision." Then we get to the first example of this brave new frontier for advertising and… it's a banner ad for hot sauce.

Lol and, indeed, lmao. Another example shown is a user asking ChatGPT about Santa Fe, which sees the bot respond with ads for holiday rentals and an offer to help plan a trip there. Would you let an AI handle your holiday booking?

The bit that goes unsaid here is that the world more widely seems to be waking up to the fact that AI could be a dangerous bubble, with untold billions being pumped into companies like OpenAI but very little so far in the way of profit. The counter-argument to this is essentially the unicorn hunt that is Artificial General Intelligence, which if achieved has revolutionary potential, but in the meantime investors are looking at these firms and wondering where the profits are coming from, and if the bubble's going to burst.

"OpenAI is a company that's seen a huge amount of growth in terms of users in the last few years but it continues to burn investor money," AI expert Henry Adjer told the BBC. "It is not a profit-making entity. And so, for this company to start actually turning a profit, it has to find more revenue sources from somewhere other than just standard paying subscribers."

Here's OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking in May 2024: "Ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me. I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model."

Fast-forward to today: "It is clear to us that a lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don't want to pay," says Altman on X, "so we are hopeful a business model like this can work."

Bear in mind this is a guy who openly wonders how humans managed to raise babies before AI could tell us what to do, but still: what a volte-face. It's such a spectacular reverse-ferret you do wonder what kind of pressure is underlying it.

OpenAI's finances are opaque, but the usually rather sober Financial Times last year described it as an "era-defining money furnace" that lost just under $8 billion in 2025. ChatGPT has an estimated 800 million users, but only 5% of those are paying for it.

Perhaps the ads will help juice the figures a little, but boy does OpenAI need it. As well as the free and ChatGPT Go tiers, the LLM is also available in Plus ($20/month) and Pro tiers ($200/month), as well as Business and Enterprise subscriptions. Nothing above the Go tier will include ads.