Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 763 posts

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

#711

Post by techblueberry »

aurareturn wrote: post #14

- ~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…

“Extremely personal data on users”

Is this data actionable though? Google has way more marketable data on me as I search YouTube for my hobbies and other interests. My LLM could probably sell me philosophy books? The amount of marketable stuff I provide it is minimal, and even the things that are marketable I’m unlikely to click on.

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

#712

Post by solarkraft »

embedding-shape wrote: post #432
ipcress_file wrote: post #117

I love this. Now I'll be able to read student papers with ads in the middle. "Are you enjoying our exploration of state Shinto in late nineteenth century Japan? Visit Kyoto with Japan Airlines this summer! Use the code 'JAL26' for special savings!"

I know it's a joke, but the ads will surely be much more stealthy than that. Advertisers are gonna want to drive people to products and websites without it being clear it's actually an ad, like subtle ranking things differently, or trying to nudge users into some direction.

I did not think this type of “native advertising” was legal. As far as I know even in the USA ads have to be marked as such.

(that said, big companies have proven to be very effective in disregarding laws anyway)

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

#713

Post by solarkraft »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #513
embedding-shape wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's a joke, but the ads will surely be much more stealthy than that. Advertisers are gonna want to drive people to products and websites without it being clear it's actually an ad, like subtle ranking things differently, or trying to nudge users into some direction.

(smart) advertising customers will want to see metrics and reporting on how their ad campaigns are doing, and making ads that are too subtle runs the risk that the customer is being charged for a weakly or sneakily worded message that they perhaps don't like. Also curious how they're gonna generate reliable, deterministic reporting for crafty embedded ads when LLMs are famously non-deterministic.

LLM providers know a lot about their customers. I expect that, with their post-privacy approach, they will not have qualms about scanning a customers’ future chats for mentions of the advertised product (oh, the analysis potential!).

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

#714

Post by semiquaver »

nkrisc wrote: post #648
keiferski wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To conclude that Google is a net productivity loss you’d have to also factor in the productivity of all the queries over time where you _did_ find what you were looking for.

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

#715

Post by toddmorey »

aurareturn wrote: post #14

- ~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…

Everything in tech becomes ad-supported bullshit even if you pay for it. Tech knows no other business model with consumers besides devaluing the product to grow large enough to be another shitty ad platform.

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

#716

Post by techblueberry »

Invictus0 wrote: post #421
mattlondon wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Meta are many thousands of sales people, managers, engineers, SREs, HR, masseuses etc. If you want to scale to Meta or Goog scale when doing ads you won't be able to do it with a few dozen people. Just sales will be hundreds or thousands spread across all the major territories

what's with all the naysaying? It's HN in 2025 and you think a company the size of OpenAI can't afford to build ads?

I love the “making 10s of billions of dollars going up against the most cutthroat companies in the world is easy!”

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

#717

Post by fragmede »

semiquaver wrote: post #714
nkrisc wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To conclude that Google is a net productivity loss you’d have to also factor in the productivity of all the queries over time where you _did_ find what you were looking for.

Would you also subtract all the time spent on Facebook after Googling for "facebook" and clicking on the first link in order to get there?

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

#718

Post by aranelsurion »

downsplat wrote: post #478
aranelsurion wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since each chat is virtually independent That hasn't been true for a while though. Open a new chat tab in ChatGPT and ask it "What do you know about me" to see it in action.

You can turn that off. If you're using LLMs for technical or real world questions, it's nicer for each chat to be a blank slate.

You can also use Temporary Chats for that.

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

#719

Post by scuff3d »

jstummbillig wrote: post #590
scuff3d wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least those are obvious. Them sneaking ads in that don't look like ads are what I'm more concerned about.

That would be illegal. I understand that there are a lot of strong opinions and open questions about OpenAI behavior – the amount of vigilantism is quite staggering – but if what they do is found to be clearly illegal by courts around the world, they will have to pay very hefty fines. Disguising ads is one such move. That's just not a winning business.

Their entire business model is currently based on legally questionable practices. I'd argue they wouldn't even exist without massive copyright infringement and utter disregard for software licences.

To my knowledge there is absolutely no legal precedent for one company simply paying to have themselves more heavily weighted in the training data. So it just happens that they show up more in responses then their competitors.

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

#720

Post by [deleted] »

daveguy wrote: post #702
idiotsecant wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins is a weird topic to randomly insert there. You want to elaborate on why all stablecoins will fail? This is a pretty ...novel take.

Stable coins fail when there's a run on the bank. Crypto is a wild west of unregulated banking. They have essentially become tools for money laundering and scam enablers, so it might take a while. But eventually the general public will say "no thanks" to a pain in the ass version of regular money. When the rush to the exits happen, the ~7 txn/s limit of Bitcoin will become painful.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN