Ads inside ChatGPT may be on the horizon.

Ad Age

They’re not copping to much yet, but recent hiring activity and wishy-washy statements make it seem an awful lot like OpenAI is planning to introduce ads into its suite of products like ChatGPT.

As the Financial Times reports, the company is hiring ad talent away from its big tech rivals like Google and Meta. And ad-oriented job listings at the company that the FT spotted on LinkedIn offer a similar sense.

So far, even the free versions of OpenAI’s products have remained ad-free. Of course, the company is currently swimming in money — in the two years since its flagship chatbot dropped, OpenAI’s valuation skyrocketed to $157 billion — but amid reports of shrinking traffic and the extremely expensive nature of AI infrastructure, it may well be starting to feel the squeeze.

If it did start to put ads into ChatGPT, the formerly nonprofit OpenAI would be crossing a Rubicon of sleaziness; the obvious integration would be to jump on users asking things like “best air fryer” and then pointing them toward companies paying OpenAI for publicity, undermining the entire premise of an intelligent and objective AI-powered assistant.

DraperGPT

In an interview with the FT, chief financial officer Sarah Friar candidly said the company had been weighing an ads model, though she declined to say when or where such ads would be released besides saying the company would be “thoughtful about when and where we implement them.”

A former mover and shaker for the likes of Nextdoor and Salesforce, Friar went on to point out that she and OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil — who previously helmed ad-supported projects at Instagram and Twitter — have a ton of ad experience.

“The good news with Kevin Weil at the wheel with product is that he came from Instagram,” she told the outlet. “He knows how this works.”

Following the interview, however, Friar backtracked with an unconvincing reversal.

“Our current business is experiencing rapid growth and we see significant opportunities within our existing business model,” she told the FT. “While we’re open to exploring other revenue streams in the future, we have no active plans to pursue advertising.”

As of now, of course, there’s no confirmation of anything except internal talks about introducing ads into OpenAI products.

Reading between the lines, however, it seems like the firm doing a bit more than brainstorming — and that after-interview reversal makes the whole thing seem all the more likely to happen.

More on OpenAI’s interiority: OpenAI Implores Judge Not to Expose Communications by Its Top Researchers