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How ChatGPT serves ads

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291–300 of 383 posts

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#291
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ⓘ This part of the response was sponsored by Vercel LLMs are essentially unregulated. I don't believe they have any legal disclosure obligation in America.

They may ignore the disclosure obligation, but technically they are supposed to disclose this fact.

> technically they are supposed to disclose this fact

Under what law?

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#293
Does this mean an adblocker could man-in-the-middle at the browser layer and strip the "single_advertiser_ad_unit" from the server responses ? But the ofc OpenAI would change its system to evade this... and so on

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#294

These are the less worrying kind of ads in our future. Seeing how google has been fighting SEO for ages, what's going to happen when companies figure out how to inject ads into the model? We haven't yet seen the problem of adversarial content in play, I think.

> Seeing how google has been fighting SEO for ages

I wish people would stop repeating this canard. Google gave up fighting SEO in about 2020. Emails that came out during antitrust discovery revealed that Google had decided to include advert-laden SEO trash in search results because it made them more money. This is why search quality has drastically declined in the last several years.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#295

Less than two years ago, Sam Altman said > I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model. I would do it if it meant that was the only way to get everybody in the world access to great services, but if we can find something that doesn't do that, I'd prefer that. So, is this OpenAI announcing they're strapped for cash?

No, I suspect that "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" was doublespeak for "ads are coming eventually". I would tend to think of someone like him as a person who uses words to achieve a specific goal, rather than someone who speaks whatever is truly on their mind. Whether those words are lies or truth or somewhere in between is irrelevant; what matters to them is the outcome. It's likely a waste of time trying…

>a person who uses words to achieve a specific goal

“I can’t change my personality.”

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was either a) a plain lie b) they're actually at their last resort. That's thinking like a normal honest human :-) My point is that it was likely not a statement about reality (true or false) at all, but rather a phrase designed to elicit some response in the listener, such as the idea: 'Sam Altman isn't the kind of CEO who would put ads in his products unless he really had to'. He's not describing how things…

> He's not describing how things are, but how he wants you to think about them. That is what a lie is. The fact that some people think he exists in a different plane of existence from normal humans does not change the meaning of “lie”.

Hold on, doesn’t he think ads aren’t cool, assuming he watched the movie The Social Network years ago?

Sam Altman wants you to believe he doesn’t like ads. Sam Altman wants you to believe ads are a last resort for him. Sam is losing money. Sam reached his last resort option.

(PS - just quoted from https://sfstandard.com/pacific-standard-time/2026/04/15/sam-... in another comment)

So he is allegedly reported to be very dishonest but I wonder if the ad claim is a good example.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#297
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was either a) a plain lie b) they're actually at their last resort. That's thinking like a normal honest human :-) My point is that it was likely not a statement about reality (true or false) at all, but rather a phrase designed to elicit some response in the listener, such as the idea: 'Sam Altman isn't the kind of CEO who would put ads in his products unless he really had to'. He's not describing how things…

Feels like the harm of "at last resort" lie is more harmful than the benefit of "is being honest" for him.

Will ads harm ChatGPT subscription growth or enterprise use? If both, maybe ads are a last resort and completely necessary?

(Maybe consumers and businesses are fine having their slop tainted. Or mostly.)

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#298
Nothing in this article says that the agent talking to you is isolated from the ad tag. The problem is even if Open AI goes to lengths to prevent your chatbot from knowing about a banner ad content (and therefore recommend it!) people will ASSUME that it does.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#299

Does this mean an adblocker could man-in-the-middle at the browser layer and strip the "single_advertiser_ad_unit" from the server responses ? But the ofc OpenAI would change its system to evade this... and so on

That's an interesting idea. I think ultimately, all AI providers will serve ads with a standard protocol. Something like Universal Commerce Protocol that Google launched a few months ago: https://developers.googleblog.com/under-the-hood-universal-c...

And the browsers will protect the protocol somehow.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#300
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I’ve long believed to be true and important to understand, yet rarely see anybody else argue, so it makes me happy to read. I think of it like the kissing noise we make to make a pet come. You could call it the truth or a lie depending on what the pet is expecting and whether you then do it, but both judgements miss what actually happened: it didn’t even occur to us to think about whether it’s “true…

There is a thin layer of high functioning sociopath at the top of all human social structures. Never trust anyone who wants to lead at that level. You have more in common with a colossal squid at the bottom of the deepest trench than you do with that kind of human.

Nah. People are just more adaptable to their circumstances than you think.

Something I think about from time to time is sacking during war, where soldiers are allowed to do as they please with a conquered civilian population. If I applied your same reasoning, I'd have to conclude that on average there's a great number of people who are not committing atrocities just because of the fear of repercussions. What I think happens is that getting desensitized to violence and being constantly made to make violent decisions makes anymore more likely to commit a violent act that they never would have otherwise. It doesn't need a special kind of brain, it just needs special circumstances.

Same for anyone in a position of power, except it's shamelessly lying and making decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people, instead of direct violence.

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