OpenAI is reportedly testing advertising within the next version of ChatGPT’s Android app.
Reverse engineer Tibor Blaho, posting on X, formerly Twitter, said Android app 1.2025.329 beta includes new references to an "ads feature" with "bazaar content", "search ad" and "search ads carousel".
The addition of advertising, to help pay for the AI’s development, has been widely predicted.
However, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said that the idea of ads-plus-AI is “uniquely unsettling” to him.
He once described adding advertising as a last resort.
OpenAI has hired about 630 former Meta employees representing about 20% of its 3,000 staff, according to LinkedIn data analysed by The Information.
“The company is considering whether ChatGPT could show ads based on its memory or the information it remembers about users,” Tibor Blaho said.
Sarah Friar, chief financial officer at OpenAI, told the Financial Times in an interview last year that the AI start-up was weighing up an ads model, adding that it planned to be “thoughtful about when and where we implement them [ads]”.
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