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OpenAI is introducing advertising on ChatGPT, as the $500bn start-up seeks new sources of revenue to fuel its continued expansion and fend off fierce competition from rivals Google and Anthropic.
The San Francisco-headquartered company announced on Friday that it would begin testing adverts on its free chatbot and cheapest paid offering.
The ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT answers in the coming weeks. OpenAI said the marketing messages will be clearly labelled and will appear if relevant to the query.
The company, led by chief executive Sam Altman, is exploring new revenue streams that could help fund spending commitments of roughly $1.4tn on computing resources over the next decade.
OpenAI anticipates it will make “low billions” of dollars from advertising in 2026, and more each year thereafter, according to a person close to the company.
The FT reported that OpenAI was exploring advertising in late December 2024. It delayed plans last year after triggering a “code red” internally to shift focus on to competition with rivals Google and Anthropic.
Advertising revenue has underpinned the growth of search and social media giants Google and Meta, but OpenAI had previously resisted embedding ads into its chatbot’s answers, citing concerns that it could undermine the trustworthiness and objectivity of responses.
“People trust ChatGPT for many important and personal tasks, so as we introduce ads, it’s crucial we preserve what makes ChatGPT valuable in the first place,” said the company. “That means you need to trust that ChatGPT’s responses are driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising.”
In recent months, OpenAI has been enhancing the ability of ChatGPT to store information from conversations that can later be retrieved to provide more personalised responses.
The focus on “memories” provides a powerful tranche of preferences which the company anticipates drawing on to tailor hyper-personalised advertising, according to the person close to OpenAI. The company said personalisation could be turned off and memories deleted.
Earlier this week, Google launched personalised advertising into its AI mode in its search engine, which delivers bespoke discounts to users shopping on the platform.
OpenAI is also working on other alternative business lines, including a suite of AI hardware devices, developing bespoke products for governments and businesses and new shopping tools.
It is also in early talks with investors regarding a new funding round that could raise about $80bn, according to people familiar with the deal.