Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#61

Post by SoftTalker » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

crisnoble wrote: post #48

jerf wrote: post #3

When ads are inevitably folded into the prompts to the AI, I imagine it'll be fun for a bit to prompt the AI to react with disgust to the idea of having to serve some ad. Until they fix that hole. I hate that the progression is so predictable. Yeah, clearly labelled ads today. Less clearly labelled tomorrow. Then they'll be indistinguishable from the text of the AI but still separate. Then they'll start folding it in…

Marketing companies are already selling their ability to influence the training phase. I've seen entirely fake companies with fake products getting recommended for real queries, and the companies behind them selling this as proof to real companies. How would the models know the difference between a completely astroturfed e-commerce site and a real one? What data are they going to use when you ask for the "best natura…

Who better to detect slop than the slop engines themselves?

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#62

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #57

faangguyindia wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's fitness app, it's called macrocodex and we've something like 17,000+ users and it's a free app, no subscription or ads. I think chatgpt recommends it because it produces guaranteed results within 2-4 weeks and I think this primary reason why users perhaps boost the app via chatgpt!? I've not done any marketing other than mentioning it a few times on hackernews. Edit: it seems many people here do not understan…

It's probably mentioned favorably on fitness forums or sites that were crawled and included in ChatGPT training.

They certainly just mentioned it favourably here, even guaranteeing results!!!

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#63

Post by skinfaxi » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

hotsauceror wrote: post #15

bitmasher9 wrote: post #9

It looks like the old saying is true. The smartest minds in all of tech are working overtime to get you to click on advertisements.

The smartest minds in all of tech worked overtime to finally give computers the ability to lie to us. Excelsior!

It has ever been the case that garbage in, garbage out. AI is nothing new in that regard.

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#64

Post by radiorental » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

expedition32 wrote: post #33

ryandvm wrote: post #18

Did anybody think this wasn't going to happen? They weren't going to burn a couple trillion dollars of capital and lose money on every API call just so you could ask it to tell you why your cat brings you dead mice. They're going to pump this shit so full of advertising it's not going to be funny. And worse, it's going to be incredibly subtle and insidious. You're not even going to realize the responses are guiding y…

So now if you ask ChatGPT about what electric shaver to buy the answer will be sponsored? How nice.

I'd go darker than that. Think about how chatgpt is trying to position itself as a provider of medical advise.

Its easy to see how it will gently tune it's response from symptom to solution.

Cue rapid narrators voice "Chatgpt may cause death, seek real medical advice before buying what chatgpt recommends"

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#65

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #62

SoftTalker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably mentioned favorably on fitness forums or sites that were crawled and included in ChatGPT training.

They certainly just mentioned it favourably here, even guaranteeing results!!!

Maybe they used an LLM powered bot to make the favorable comment here in order to guarantee the results.

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#66

Post by embedding-shape » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #47

officeplant wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Hicks really did say it best when it came to marketing: "By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself. It’s just a little thought; I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can."

I was recently rewatching one of Hicks routines for the first time in possibly 20 years and his content is just as relevant now, if not more so, than it was 30+ years ago when he wrote and performed it.

Helps that Hicks was borderline obsessed with hating marketing and marketers, and they're an even bigger pest today than 30 years ago. I guess that's how you make your content relevant through the ages, target the parasites :)

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#67

Post by Betelbuddy » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

ppalata wrote: post #16

This is not meant to be tongue in cheek comment but has anybody figured out how the companies manage the "everyone is going to be replaced in a year" rhetoric while also working hard on ads that are clearly designed for humans to consume?

The amount of logic and thoughtful reasoning in your comment is so strong, its making my head hurt. Why are you raining on our IPO parade?

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#68

Post by crisnoble » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #61

crisnoble wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing companies are already selling their ability to influence the training phase. I've seen entirely fake companies with fake products getting recommended for real queries, and the companies behind them selling this as proof to real companies. How would the models know the difference between a completely astroturfed e-commerce site and a real one? What data are they going to use when you ask for the "best natura…

Who better to detect slop than the slop engines themselves?

I suppose Google could distinguish an fully astroturfed site via historic traffic and search data to see that a site with the first known views of all time within the last month couldn't possibly have the claimed 10 year history and millions of happy customers, but it is certainly not filtering it out today. These signals are not perfect, what about a company trying to go direct to consumer after years of big box distribution? Relying on historic data would also lead to old domains getting bought to peddle new crap. The biggest source of GEO gains today is to have humans go into subreddits and niche forums to add "organic" recommendations that will get slurped up and treated with high value to LLMs. Other than that I have seen companies literally create pages called "for LLMs" with very specific instructions about how to talk about their brand, their history, and how amazing they are. The dumb thing is all of the techniques work great and the Chat interfaces will obediently regurgitate.

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#69

Post by bakies » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

ppalata wrote: post #16

This is not meant to be tongue in cheek comment but has anybody figured out how the companies manage the "everyone is going to be replaced in a year" rhetoric while also working hard on ads that are clearly designed for humans to consume?

They want agent driven shopping and ads to sell to those agents

Re: Amazon pilots ad services in ChatGPT

#70

Post by gpm » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

ppalata wrote: post #16

This is not meant to be tongue in cheek comment but has anybody figured out how the companies manage the "everyone is going to be replaced in a year" rhetoric while also working hard on ads that are clearly designed for humans to consume?

By making decisions under the assumption that society will continue.

Even under the reduction to absurdity of everyone's jobs being replaced in a year, there's still some system of allocating resources and they would still like more resources allocated to them. That system still likely bears resemblance to the current economy and convincing people/selling the ability to convince people is likely still a valuable ability to have.