Chatgpt Ads Are Now A Reality For Millions Of Free Users

It’s been a long time coming. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman once called the idea of mixing ads with AI “uniquely unsettling,” but that didn’t stop the company from laying the groundwork for exactly that. As of February 9, ChatGPT ads are officially live. OpenAI confirmed that sponsored content is now rolling out to logged-in adult users in the US who are on the free tier or the $8/month Go subscription plan.

The ads show up at the bottom of ChatGPT’s responses. They’re labeled as “sponsored” and are visually separated from the actual answer. OpenAI says the ads don’t influence what ChatGPT tells you. If you ask for recipe ideas, for example, you might see an ad for a grocery delivery service underneath the response. Users under 18 won’t see ads, and they won’t appear near sensitive topics like health, mental health, or politics.

OpenAI is framing this as a way to keep AI accessible. Running ChatGPT for hundreds of millions of free users costs serious money, and subscriptions alone aren’t covering it. The company reportedly lost over $11.5 billion in a single quarter last year and has committed to roughly $1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next several years. Digital ads are the obvious answer. Google and Meta each pull in tens of billions per quarter from advertising alone, so the playbook is well established.

What this means for your privacy

Here’s where things get tricky. ChatGPT ads are personalized based on what you’re talking about in your current conversation. If you have personalized ads turned on, OpenAI will also pull from your past chats and how you’ve interacted with previous ads. The company says it doesn’t share your conversations with advertisers and won’t sell your data. Advertisers only get aggregated performance numbers like total views and clicks.

You do have some control. There’s an option to turn off ad personalization in settings, though you’ll still see ads based on whatever you’re currently chatting about. You can also hide individual ads or opt out entirely, but that comes with a catch: fewer daily free messages. The only way to avoid ChatGPT ads completely is to upgrade to Plus ($20/month), Pro ($200/month), or one of OpenAI’s business plans.

Anthropic wasted no time taking shots at this move. The company ran a Super Bowl ad last week mocking OpenAI’s decision and promising that its Claude chatbot would stay ad-free. Altman fired back, arguing that OpenAI brings AI to billions of people who can’t afford subscriptions. It’s a fair point, but it doesn’t change the fact that your AI assistant is now also a billboard.

The post ChatGPT ads are now a reality for millions of free users appeared first on Phandroid.