{"id":276023,"date":"2026-02-10T01:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T01:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/276023\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T01:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T01:10:15","slug":"chatgpt-begins-testing-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/276023\/","title":{"rendered":"ChatGPT begins testing ads"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI announced it would begin rolling out test ads in ChatGPT<\/a> Monday afternoon, affecting the free and “Go” tiers of the artificial intelligence chatbot service. <\/p>\n

In a release announcing the beginning of ad testing on Monday, OpenAI said the ads will be clearly marked and \u201cvisually separated\u201d from the chatbot\u2019s answers. The ads will be \u201coptimized based on what\u2019s most helpful to you,\u201d the company wrote. The ads will be based on the user\u2019s topic of conversation, prior chats and previous interactions with ads.<\/p>\n

OpenAI said the ads would not influence the chatbot\u2019s replies, and that users will have the choice to prevent OpenAI from offering personalized ads based on user interests. <\/p>\n

OpenAI has been teasing the introduction of ads for weeks. In a post on X in mid-January<\/a>, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the company would start testing ads but stressed it would “not accept money to influence the answer” ChatGPT gives the user. “We keep your conversations private from advertisers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

OpenAI said it would \u201cbuild protections to reduce the risk of scams and other harmful or misleading ads\u201d and that it would not display ads for users under the age of 18, as determined by OpenAI\u2019s predictions or the user\u2019s own data.<\/p>\n

OpenAI introduced ChatGPT\u2019s Go tier in January. The Go tier<\/a> costs $8 a month and gives users increased access to file uploads, image creation and messaging, compared to the free tier.<\/p>\n

OpenAI competitor Google has also reportedly indicated<\/a> that its Gemini AI platforms might feature ads in 2026, though Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said at the end of January that there were “no plans” for Gemini<\/a> to include ads. Google currently features ads<\/a> in the AI Overviews that accompany Google Search results.<\/p>\n

OpenAI rival Anthropic has said that it will avoid placing ads in its Claude chatbot service for now.<\/p>\n

In a blog post<\/a> announcing the decision to forego ads last Wednesday, Anthropic wrote that \u201cincluding ads in conversations with Claude would be incompatible\u201d with positioning Claude as \u201ca genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthropic pilloried its rivals\u2019 allowance of ads in a new campaign<\/a> of video ads<\/a>, one of which played during the Super Bowl. <\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s Altman replied to Anthropic\u2019s video ads with a caustic, lengthy rebuttal, labelling Anthropic\u2019s messaging as \u201cclearly dishonest.\u201d He said, \u201cWe believe everyone deserves to use AI and are committed to free access,\u201d positioning his company’s embrace of ads as a means to subsidize increased access to AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI announced it would begin rolling out test ads in ChatGPT Monday afternoon, affecting the free and “Go”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-276023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}