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I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

99helpers.com

71–80 of 317 posts

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#71

It’s strange to see extreme amount of hysteria on this. There’s enough market competition to not allow this. If ChatGPT is doing it then just move to Claude. If all are doing it then surely opensource models are a good alternative. But i think leaning into the hysteria provides some comfort

Most LLM users are not techies

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#73
post #2

We all know the pattern: something useful launches → it becomes popular → it needs to make money → ads everywhere. AI chat is heading the same way. So I built a fully interactive demo that shows what an ad-supported AI chatbot could actually look like: https://99helpers.com/tools/ad-supported-chat It includes every monetization pattern you can think of: - Pre-chat interstitials (like YouTube pre-rolls, but for chat)…

Is this avoidable? These things cost money to run. Who pays if not with ads?

There will I’m sure be the ability to pay and not have ads just like there is on streaming platforms, podcasts, etc.

Or should there be tax supported free AI?

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#74

It’s strange to see extreme amount of hysteria on this. There’s enough market competition to not allow this. If ChatGPT is doing it then just move to Claude. If all are doing it then surely opensource models are a good alternative. But i think leaning into the hysteria provides some comfort

Most LLM users are not techies

How does that matter? I can vibecode a ChatGPT clone in 30 min that uses gpt apis and sell it at subscription.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#76

It’s strange to see extreme amount of hysteria on this. There’s enough market competition to not allow this. If ChatGPT is doing it then just move to Claude. If all are doing it then surely opensource models are a good alternative. But i think leaning into the hysteria provides some comfort

It's interesting to contrast this take with the opinions expressed on an earlier thread about OpenAI's moat (or lack thereof).

Several people pointed to Google Search as an example of "user count as moat", and an explanation of its continued dominance despite a results page dominated by "sponsored" results.

Presumably the same reasoning would apply here.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#77

I don’t think this is what it’ll look like. Ads are going to be way insidious. One major power of these chatbots is persuasion. The end goal isn’t bombardment it’s going to be more subtle.

is this what google is on their ads service? do you have any conclusive proof that google is doing it?

if google doesn't do it, what makes you think llms would?

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#79

It’s strange to see extreme amount of hysteria on this. There’s enough market competition to not allow this. If ChatGPT is doing it then just move to Claude. If all are doing it then surely opensource models are a good alternative. But i think leaning into the hysteria provides some comfort

We didn't see the majority switch from Google to Duckduckgo because of ads or privacy... Being the "default" brings network effects that is hard to switch away.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#80

It's quite hard to tell what is satirical AI Ads and what is this 99helpers.com site, which is also really covered in pushy messages and trying hard to sell me something. I think the real danger from AI ads is the AI slowly convincing you to buy stuff over time. It's going to be super effective with the less technically adept.

It also ruins the ability to use AI to help decide between products. Right now I can use AI chat to decide which two products best meet my specific needs. Once ads are present in all of them I'll be haunted by any queries made about specific products.

I'm curious how often you find factual inaccuracies in the LLM responses when doing that.

I've found that more often than not, it gets at least one key feature/option/etc. outright wrong whenever I've tried that, making it effectively useless for me. Since I need to verify the exact information myself anyways, I'm 90% the easy to just having the different items in comparing up in side-by-side browser tabs, anyways.

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