OpenAI is entering a new era. In a series of announcements this week, the artificial intelligence giant behind ChatGPT signaled meaningful shifts in how it plans to scale its technology, and added some safety rails in response to allegations it has been subjected to time and again.
This comes as OpenAI defends its governance history, navigates criticism from co-founder Elon Musk and surrounding legal drama, and strategizes ways to increase recurring revenue.
At the center of it is that it will begin testing advertisements within ChatGPT for users on its free tier and the newly introduced $8-per-month Chat “Go” plan. This marks a new revenue source for the company as it prepares to launch hardware AI products and continues to invest heavily in data centers.
Until now, it primarily relied on investments, partnerships, and subscription revenue to cover its ever-growing computing costs.
ChatGPT ads come with guardrails
OpenAI’s belief has been that its revenue model must grow to support the value intelligence it delivers to its users and organizations. CFO Sarah Friar, in a recent blog post, explained that the company’s monetization strategy has always been direct and simple.
In this informational post, Friar also expanded on what could come next for the company- licensing to IP-based agreements. Further adding, “that is how the internet evolved. Intelligence will follow the same path.”
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On X,Sam Altman emphasized that this introduction will not result in any discrepancy in the information provided to its users.
Further clarifying that the need for this step is to ensure ChatGPT remains available to consumers who “don’t want to pay” but want to use it.
The message was echoed by Fidji Somo in her blog post, reinforcing that ads remain a means of aligning revenue with usage, rather than steering behavior. Somo also elaborated that these ads will be used to improve the user experience and will be expanded to allow users to ask questions about the sponsored product.
The move does not come as a surprise, given the rising demand for generative AI tools, and add to that the related costs, which remain high. Take a look at the earnings reports of major tech companies that continue to increase capital expenditures amid AI expansion. For OpenAI, advertising mirrors a pragmatic response as AI spending accelerates.
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