OpenAI announced on Friday the upcoming arrival of advertising in ChatGPT, with a test phase planned “in the coming weeks” in the United States for free users and those of the Go offer, its entry-level subscription. The group specifies that “Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions will not include advertising”, marking an expected change in strategy for the most used generative AI service in the world.
This development comes as OpenAI seeks to diversify its revenue, with only a limited share of its users under subscription. Despite an estimated valuation of $500 billion on private markets, and speculation about a possible $1,000 billion IPO, the company remains faced with the high cost of the infrastructure necessary to operate its models, particularly computing power.
No advertising plans for Google and Gemini
By introducing advertising, OpenAI is moving closer to the economic model of Google and Meta, largely financed by free services monetized via advertisers, while Amazon is also developing a rapidly growing advertising activity. For Jeremy Goldman, analyst at Emarketer, “advertising is not a distraction in the race for generative AI; this is the way for OpenAI to stay there,” believing that the competition is now about “the ability to monetize attention without sacrificing trust.”
Our file on OpenAI and ChatGPT
OpenAI claims to want to supervise this test to preserve the user experience, with announcements displayed at the bottom of the responses, “clearly identified and distinct”. Fidji Simo, signatory of the blog post, ensures that “our priority is user trust and experience before revenue”, recalling in particular that “ads do not influence responses”. At the same time, the sector is observing the choices of competitors, with Google affirming that there are “no plans for advertising in the Gemini application”, according to Dan Taylor, cited by Business Insider.