OpenAI will test ads in free ChatGPT and $8 ChatGPT Go

OpenAI, the San Francisco company, said on Friday that over the next several weeks it will begin testing ads in the free version of its ChatGPT chatbot and in a low-cost tier called ChatGPT Go, which costs $8 a month. The company said the advertising program is part of a broader effort to boost revenue as it considers a public stock offering and expands products for businesses in areas like coding, health care, finance and law.

OpenAI charges subscription fees for ChatGPT and other software; it reached $13 billion in revenue last year and, according to a person with knowledge of the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity, expects to triple that this year. The company also plans to spend $115 billion between 2025 and 2029, mostly on cloud computing services and data centers.

In a blog post, OpenAI said that when ChatGPT responds to questions its answers would not fundamentally change and that the content of ads would not affect those answers. The company said it would not sell personal data or conversations to advertisers, and that ads would be tailored to what users ask and what they have looked for in the past; users will be able to turn off ad personalization.

The article noted that chatbots are not as conducive to advertising as traditional web pages, and that OpenAI has experimented with ways to deliver ads unobtrusively. Testing will begin over the next several weeks.

Key Topics

Tech, Openai, Chatgpt, Chatgpt Go, Online Advertising, Ipo