Imagine: you ask ChatGPT for the recipe for lemon pie and the first answer provided by the artificial intelligence is a link to an organic lemon supplier. This experience, common during a Google search, could soon land in your favorite LLM. As reported by the media Futurism, certain recent discussions between OpenAI employees, revealed by an investigation by the media The Information, indicate that Sam Altman’s company would eventually integrate sponsored results into the chatbot’s discussions.
The first rumors emerged in early December, when a software analyst discovered a dozen lines of code in the chatbot’s Android beta, referring to things like “feature ads” and “search ads carousel” who tipped him off. These projects, still far from being finalized, nevertheless provide a glimpse of what could soon become the standard for ChatGPT.
What about the users?
Concretely, what could this look like? For example, you could ask ChatGPT how much ibuprofen to take for a headache. You will first receive an advertisement for the drug Advil in response, while information about the correct dosage may be relegated to the background. A commercial logic currently absent from the OpenAI tool and which could have consequences on the use of it by the 900 million weekly users.
Among the discussions between OpenAI employees, some analyzed the best ways to integrate these advertisements without completely putting off its audience. And for good reason, would ChatGPT be as successful if advertisements polluted its results in an untimely manner? Not sure. One option for integrating sponsored content was to only make it appear after a second user request, in order to avoid bombarding users with advertising spots from the first conversation.
We still do not know exactly when this “adpocalypse» will happen, but with so much money at stake, it would be surprising if this project does not come to fruition one day or another. The OpenAI spokesperson explains that“As ChatGPT becomes better and more widely used, we’re looking for ways to continue bringing more artificial intelligence to everyone. As part of this, we are exploring what ads could look like in our product. Users have a relationship of trust with ChatGPT, and any approach would be designed to respect that trust.”
These advertisements could allow ChatGPT users to fully understand that OpenAI is above all a company whose primary goal is to make money. The conversations you have with its tool are not private, even if the interface makes it seem so. For the moment, this information is not used or sold to advertising profiles, but this could happen, without you having any say in the matter.
