OpenAI is adding ads to free and $8 ChatGPT plans while launching cheaper subscriptions. The company says ads won't change answers and advertisers won't see your chats, but OpenAI will use your conversations to target ads. Matt Wolfe argues this mirrors Google's path as LLMs become commoditized, and users will flee to cheaper alternatives with better design.
Now, there's a lot of discourse going around right now about OpenAI and what's happening over there because people think they're struggling. They're rolling out cheaper plans to try to entice more people to, you know, pay them money. And they also announced that they will be doing advertising both in the free tier and in the Go$8 a month tier. In fact, they also put out an entire article about their approach to advertising. And a lot of people are basically saying OpenAI's kind of speedrunning their downfall right now. OpenAI's bleeding at a rate of billions of dollars a year. So they need to figure out ways to generate more revenue. And their best course of action right now is a cheaper plan because not many people are paying for the $20 a month or $200 a month plans and to, you know, throw in advertising and follow the sort of meta Google model. Now, they do say ads do not influence the answers that ChatGPT gives you. So when you give it a prompt like asking a question, the response isn't going to include advertising. The advertising will be sort of outside of the chat, but it contextual to what you're chatting about. None of your conversations go to the advertiser. So advertisers are never going to actually see your chats, but those chats are going to inform OpenAI on what to actually advertise to you. And then we have Google, who famously makes most of their money off of advertising, saying that they really have no plans to put ads inside of their chatbots. I mean, they don't really need to. People are probably going to go and use the chatbot that A gives them the best answers, but but B has the best user experience. It almost feels like the large language models underneath are all getting so good that they're kind of like a commodity. And if they're all as good as each other, I feel like most people are going to go use the option that's the least expensive and also has the best user experience, which is at the moment, you know, seeming like it's less and less going to be chatgpt.
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