Free AI, sponsored answers: inside ChatGPT’s advertising shift 🤖📣

Cliquez ici pour lire en français

What once sounded like a rumor is now official: ads are coming to ChatGPT for some users in the United States. The rollout starts with the Free tier and ChatGPT Go, OpenAI’s new lower-cost subscription plan. It’s a deliberate shift—and one that could fundamentally reshape how we relate to AI in our daily lives.

Ads… right inside your conversations 💬

In practical terms, adult users in the U.S. on the Free and Go plans are beginning to see sponsored placements directly below ChatGPT’s responses. These ads are contextually related to the conversation, but clearly labeled and visually separated from the AI-generated text.

Source : OpenAI

OpenAI says ads won’t influence how ChatGPT answers questions. The model isn’t being “tuned” to favor a product or service in its responses; instead, ads live in a dedicated space beneath each message. That promise will be closely scrutinized. The line between a helpful suggestion and subtle commercial pressure can blur quickly—especially in an interface designed to feel conversational and intelligent.

Free—but at what cost ? 💸

Why make this move now? OpenAI is blunt: advertising helps fund the massive infrastructure required to run ChatGPT while keeping a free tier—and a relatively affordable plan like Go—alive. In other words, the trade-off is becoming clearer. Accept ads. Pay more to remove them. Or limit your usage.

Source : OpenAI

Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions remain ad-free. For users on ad-supported plans, there’s an escape hatch: upgrade to a higher-tier subscription, or—if you’re on the free plan—opt for stricter daily message limits in exchange for an ad-free experience.

“Free,” it turns out, now comes in multiple flavors of compromise: time, comfort, or money.

Personal data: promises and skepticism 🛡️

On the most sensitive issue—data—OpenAI is trying to get ahead of concerns. The company says advertisers won’t have access to users’ conversations, chat history, memories, or personal information. Ads are targeted using signals controlled by OpenAI, and user data is not sold directly to partners.

Source : OpenAI

The company also maintains that advertising won’t shape ChatGPT’s answers and that the model will remain neutral, even when an advertiser appears in the interface. Still, trust is fragile. After years of search engines increasingly shaped by paid placement and SEO manipulation, many users worry about a similar drift—this time inside a tool meant to help them think, create, and make decisions.

Is AI heading toward “enshittification”  ? 🧨

For now, the ad experiment is limited to the U.S. OpenAI says it’s waiting for user feedback before expanding further. Translation: if engagement metrics look good and backlash stays manageable, don’t be surprised if ads land in your ChatGPT window in the coming months.

Beyond the technical details, this is symbolic. Generative AI is entering the attention economy—fully and unapologetically—with all the same tensions that have defined the modern web.

The real question isn’t just what ChatGPT can do. It’s under what economic model it will operate: a trusted tool—or yet another monetized interface optimized for revenue.

So what do we do with an AI “under influence”? 🎯

With ads in the mix, ChatGPT’s status shifts. In our collective imagination, it was close to neutral—a productivity tool, a thinking partner. Now, it’s officially a commercial space. OpenAI promises transparency, data protection, and unchanged response quality. But history suggests those balances are rarely stable for long.

The broader, collective question is this: how much advertising are we willing to tolerate inside the tools that help us work, learn, create—or even think ? The next major battle in AI may not be about model size or benchmark scores. It may be about the conditions under which we use these systems every day.

Let’s open the debate 💬
Would you accept ads in ChatGPT to keep access free or cheaper? Or is that a red line ? How do you see the future of AI assistants unfolding—ad-supported, subscription-only, or something entirely different?