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Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

bleepingcomputer.com

641–650 of 763 posts

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#641
In reading the comments here I only saw two references to Apple's local system LLM. I wrote my own chat app using it and it effectively handles simple queries locally and otherwise sends queries to Apple's secure enclave servers that protect privacy, according to their privacy statement.

For tech people using Ollama and LM Studio for routine tasks works fairly well.

Some of the small Chinese models like Qwen really are good. In my workflows it is usually obvious to me if I want to use a local model or use something like Gemini 3 research with many built in tools. It takes work, but writing custom tools specific to my needs to use with LM Studio increases the fraction of use cases I can run locally.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#642

- ~1 billion users in just 3 years - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products - Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are) - An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative di…

I think investors would certainly love this. So why hasn’t it already happened? My guess: they would lose a ton of cultural cachet. Turning OpenAI into an ads business is basically admitting that AGI isn’t coming down the pipeline anytime soon. Yes, I know people will make some cost-based argument that ads + agi is perfectly logical. But that’s not how people will perceive things, and OpenAI knows this. And I think t…

Would've happened if Claude and Gemini weren't things. But they are.

Regardless of AGI, being known as the only LLM that introduced ads sounds very bad.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the missing part is "we know they need this!" but they don't have the ad network to have the pixels on the vendor sites to track the conversion (or not for remarketing!). They only have half (at most) of the picture. This is why they tried to create a browser (remember that? Nope me neither) to try and get the full picture. Advertisers are accustomed to pay for conversions now. If you can't track it, you cant pro…

God, the irony if they were using Google on the backend for advertising...

They're already using Google for renting compute. As are Anthropic.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#644

This seems like an admission that LLMs don’t bring the productivity gains claimed/projected. Advertising works entirely counter to (individual) productivity. Adertising requires attention, and attention distracts from productivity. So oAI’s new route to profitability cannibalises their earlier route.

Not sure how that makes sense. Using Google with ads is more productive for finding something than not using Google at all, as was the case beforehand.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#645
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. If anything brand recognition is more important for technically illiterate. > In the same way that every 90s mom called a video game console a "Nintendo" And this proves that point. Nintendo sales in the 1990s crushed the competitors numbers.

> Hard disagree. If anything brand recognition is more important for technically illiterate. No, the tech-illiterate gravitate towards the path of least resistance, which just means the platform defaults. OpenAI doesn't control the platform, which means they've already lost to Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Don't build your castle in someone else's kingdom. > And this proves that point. Nintendo sales in the 1990s cru…

> No, the tech-illiterate gravitate towards the path of least resistance, which just means the platform defaults.

The path of least resistance is by way of brand recognition.

> OpenAI doesn't control the platform

OpenAI has 800mm MAUs on their own platform that they control, assuming we trust their reporting. They own chat.com, all of our grandmothers know ChatGPT - they don't know Gemini...I'm not even sure how OpenAI could have lost to Apple or Microsoft in the AI race. Those are nonsensical comparisons.

> Sony absolutely annihilated Nintendo in the home console market for the decade between 1995 and 2005

Yes you're right. If we shift the comparison window by a full 50% the numbers do favor Sony.

My point is not that OpenAI is infallible or that a competitor couldn't also be successful. Only that brand recognition is a legitimate and important factor.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#646
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ChatGPT’s moat is mostly “it’s the first AI thing I used/heard about”. It’s not clear to me that’s enough to maintain their market share if OpenAI is the only one mixing in ads. It does seem to work elsewhere, though; consumers have brand loyalty to a fault, and often for the brand they started with.

That’s basically Google’s search moat too.

No, Google was 10x better than any competitor until they started actively sabotaging their search product in the past 5 years or so.

ChatGPT feels like an inferior product when compared to Claude or Qwen.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust in LLMs is easily broken, and many users are starting to see the cracks. Once those AI companies start rolling out ads inserted in the answers, the quality will go down even more, and they will burn the last good will of the people. There is no moat because their only way to make money is to self-destruct. Talking on a more practical POV, your cost to display the ads needs to be lower than what companies pay yo…

> ads might simply not be profitable when integrated in LLM answers. This is wishful thinking. Companies are using LLMs for development. The ads are not for a $50 throw pillow, they are for a $10k monthly business-critical service. Consumers might not be worth advertising to (although I doubt it), but B2B ads - absolutely.

If there is a $10k monthly business critical service, are ChatGPT ads going to sway you?

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#648

This seems like an admission that LLMs don’t bring the productivity gains claimed/projected. Advertising works entirely counter to (individual) productivity. Adertising requires attention, and attention distracts from productivity. So oAI’s new route to profitability cannibalises their earlier route.

Not sure how that makes sense. Using Google with ads is more productive for finding something than not using Google at all, as was the case beforehand.

Quite often these days I find myself not even finding what I was looking for with Google, making it a net productivity loss.

I’m sure it’s there, somewhere, buried in the SEO and AI slopspam, but I couldn’t find it.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perplexity sponsors Lewis Hamilton, with a prime spot on his helmet so every on board shot has their logo. https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/perplexity-x-lewis-hamilt... Here it is in action https://youtube.com/shorts/1SqQV5iD__s

How can we even measure whether this has any effect on people? This seems like a lousy way to get the word out.

FTX was his sponsor at Mercedes, and Crowdstrike still is worth them.

Oracle is the biggest logo on the it the Red Bull.

They all must think it is worth it. In guesses they get paddock passes and hospitality to schmooze in Qatar.

Re: Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out

#650

- ~1 billion users in just 3 years - Extremely personal data on users - Novel way of introducing and learning more about sponsored products - Strong branding for non-techie people (most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are) - An app that is getting more and more addictive/indispensable I think OpenAI is going to kill it in ads eventually. This is why Meta and Google went all in on AI. Their lucrative di…

> most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are In think the point is that they don’t need to know what Gemini is, they just need to know Google, which they most definitely do. IMO ads rollout won’t be as simple as you’re describing it. A lot of people have switched from Google search to AI specifically because it isn’t filled with SEO, ad filled nonsense. So they’ll need to tread very, very carefully to in…

Google the search engine was on a down trend before. And, hallucinations aside, pagerank++ search is primitive compared to an LLM, and I wonder if people won't associate the new "natural language conversation search" to chatgpt more than google now.
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