How relevant were the ads? Were they integrated into the chat or shown as a box next to the conversation? How did they manage to add the topics to a conversation about mobile games?
SOTGO•Jun 25, 2026
I see "This plan may include ads" under the $8 Go tier (accessed https://chatgpt.com/pricing/ from the US) going back to January. Is the behavior change recent?
paxys•Jun 25, 2026
Their entire ads rollout is recent.
blourvim•Jun 25, 2026
Mildly disappointed that it is not the dystopian adpocalypse we were warned against
thrance•Jun 25, 2026
Patience, Google wasn't enshittified in a day, after all!
blourvim•Jun 25, 2026
Ah, wise words. There is still time indeed
khurs•Jun 25, 2026
Open AI attended the annual Cannes Ad Festival this year, alongside the usual Google, Meta etc
They have 900m users and 50m of them are paying.
Ads are inevitable. Surprised they put them on a paid plan user like you, but they are IPO'ing this year and need to show the best numbers possible.
hightrix•Jun 25, 2026
Ads are inevitable.
Enshittification is inevitable.
Interesting how those two sentences are directly aligned. I hate ad culture.
cess11•Jun 25, 2026
"Ads are inevitable."
Not at all. They could even be prohibited by law, as evidenced by prohibitions of some ads being common in most jurisdictions and the Clean City Law of São Paulo.
One of the grand old men of modern advertising said that "man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard", and suggested that he would eventually turn to covert militant direct action against it. I suspect that he would have extended this to screen ads if he had lived long enough to experience them.
zb3•Jun 25, 2026
That's some interesting economy there.. 850m users are not paying, so we'll fund the product by displaying advertisements to those users that do not pay.
The advertisers spend money on those ads, but they know the audience doesn't want to pay.. but fortunately, their products might be free too, because they can also be funded by ads (served to the same audience).
This intelligent design provides infinite money and infinite growth!
paxys•Jun 25, 2026
They people who don’t pay for ChatGPT still spend money on toothpaste and movies and cars and cereal and a million other things. There’s a reason the advertising industry exists.
zb3•Jun 25, 2026
Are you sure that's because of online ads? (which I don't see due to ad blockers)
> There’s a reason the advertising industry exists.
I think we'd need to pause online ads to understand their true effect.. I know people buy things, but attributing these choices to the fact that an ad was displayed to the same user some days ago doesn't sound reliable to me.
jstummbillig•Jun 25, 2026
> That's some interesting economy there.. 850m users are not paying, so we'll fund the product by displaying advertisements to those users that do not pay.
That is... not interesting. That is how the ad supported web worked for the past 20 years.
stranded22•Jun 25, 2026
They have been putting ads in the free and ‘go’ plans
Are the ads static or appear in a way that would make them recognized easily so that a uBlock Origin rules remove them?
throwatdem12311•Jun 25, 2026
Ublock Origin blocks them, at least on Firefox. I haven’t tested UBo Lite on Chromium browsers.
pulvinar•Jun 25, 2026
"Ads may appear for users on the Free and Go plans" and "we will not show ads in accounts where the user tells us or we predict that they are under 18"
Could be that based on your prompts it had just decided you were an adult, and started throwing ads at you.
That was a pretty damn good ad. It manages to say a few things difficult to verbalize, and foists the absurdity of it right in the face. Nearly cathartic to watch, at least for a GPT h8r - (who, me?). The em dash after "perfect" noted in the comments... ;)
mysterydip•Jun 25, 2026
will there be a point where code generators start putting ads into their produced results, like “this pdf was made with the free version of pdfsoftware” watermarks unless you pay extra?
christkv•Jun 25, 2026
The most generic ad inventory. Personalized or content relevant ads is still fantasy I see
kylemaxwell•Jun 25, 2026
You were on a plan that explicitly includes ads; if you don't want to see them (I don't either), then you can either upgrade to the no-ad tier or, as you did, cancel. Neither choice is wrong, but OpenAI definitely has been open about that lowest-tier paid plan having ads.
21asdffdsa12•Jun 25, 2026
Or you go golden platinum extra special customer - to become even more addless for now.
I find it hilarious that they insert the adds that manual though. It would be so easy, to generate subconcious addds with an LLM. Like weave a slogan reminder into the conversation...
jstummbillig•Jun 25, 2026
When ethics become hilarious.
21asdffdsa12•Jun 25, 2026
Important is to have a illusion of choice, a play-thing of liberty. A painted on door. Buttons for settings that do nothing. Freedom is the illusion of choice.
senordevnyc•Jun 25, 2026
So edgy.
aesthesia•Jun 25, 2026
I'm not sure it would be so easy to do it in a consistent, verifiable way. You can certainly prompt the LLM to work the ad into the conversation, but making sure it actually happens and is done in a way that the advertiser is going to be happy with is a lot harder.
21asdffdsa12•Jun 25, 2026
Me, im not myself when hungry, but you do you ..
Cider9986•Jun 25, 2026
There's a black mirror episode like this. Not quite as bad having an AI doing it, though.
A woman needs this treatment after a brain injury. Iirc it clones her brain onto their servers. It's super experimental, it's a free surgery with a subscription service where you need to be within the supported area like cell towers.
If she stops paying for the service she will die. They promised to expand the support area to more countries and areas, but they end up raising prices as well as adding in advertising.
The advertising takes over her body at random contextual times and she basically does an ad read to the people in whatever situation.
It starts happening at the school where she works, she tells a kid about a certain product after he asks her about a problem. She's gonna lose her job because it creeps everyone out, so she has to pay more to get rid of the advertising.
> It would be so easy, to generate subconcious addds with an LLM. Like weave a slogan reminder into the conversation...
Probably not without changing the underlying response and tanking the benchmark ratings. Like I ask it to generate code, it tries to add a slogan reminder, now the comments on my code have Tide's slogan in them and the variables are all named "bleach".
Probably less humorous than that, but the underlying point stands. People will be extremely upset about their prompts being tinkered with, and any perceived degradation in quality will be quickly attributed to them. The hidden nature of them will probably cause speculation that they do the same on the higher tier plans.
avgDev•Jun 25, 2026
I think the ads would be more targeted. You ask it about code, and it suggests a paid library or an app that you can pay for.
It is quite interesting problem, because you could just respond with ok I want you to write whatever that library does. I don't want to pay for this.
If my business was a large CRUD app, like CRM I would be worried about smaller apps popping up on the market.
drcongo•Jun 25, 2026
Now I'm wondering if all those extra Ds in ads are a subconscious ad.
matheusmoreira•Jun 25, 2026
Never pay to avoid ads. Signals you've got money to waste, makes your attention even more valuable. You're paying to self-segment into the upper echelons of the market.
estearum•Jun 25, 2026
So?
matheusmoreira•Jun 25, 2026
So eventually some shareholder value maximizing CEO will come along and notice all the fat stacks of money he's leaving on the table by not advertising to all of those rich contrarians, which were kind enough to provide you with a database of themselves. A switch will be flipped and suddenly they will all get ads as well.
Always block the ads instead. Unconditionally, and without paying even one cent in extortion money. Your attention is yours. It's not theirs to sell to the highest bidder. You shouldn't have to pay in order to avoid being assaulted by ads. Blocking is legitimate self-defense.
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
mpalmer•Jun 25, 2026
How exactly do you suggest blocking ads that appear inline in your LLM chats
throwatdem12311•Jun 25, 2026
This has been known to be rolling out for a long time.
Netflix and Disney opened this box long ago when they introduced their “cheap with ads” plan and it’s their most popular subscription types.
The invisible hand of the market has spoken and people prefer advertisements over paying more.
Sad reality but unless we change the incentives this is going to happen with everything.
zb3•Jun 25, 2026
> Ad for Financial Times
Pay to see ads of products where you also pay to see ads :)
daft_pink•Jun 25, 2026
I'm really curious if there are privacy implications to the ads since Google ads showed the complete search that you made to the advertiser. I'm curious how their ads console works
okzgn•Jun 25, 2026
That's a way to reduce lost income from former clients.
6stringmerc•Jun 25, 2026
What are these “adds” you are seeing? Are they “ads” as in the contraction slang form of “advertisements” akin to the British “adverts” or are you making a meta commentary on the “addition” of content to you Clanker experience?
I’m not genuinely confused tbh. I’m more nothing this as a case study of the “LLM user profile” anecdata I’m collecting. Some may call it lowbrow to harp on failing basic literacy yet being compelled to pay real money for a chatbox to help with mental efforts, but here we are.
b3ing•Jun 25, 2026
I knew this would happen, the future of AI, is ads, lots of them. This isn’t the end, there will be more added on soon
18 Comments
They have 900m users and 50m of them are paying.
Ads are inevitable. Surprised they put them on a paid plan user like you, but they are IPO'ing this year and need to show the best numbers possible.
Enshittification is inevitable.
Interesting how those two sentences are directly aligned. I hate ad culture.
Not at all. They could even be prohibited by law, as evidenced by prohibitions of some ads being common in most jurisdictions and the Clean City Law of São Paulo.
One of the grand old men of modern advertising said that "man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard", and suggested that he would eventually turn to covert militant direct action against it. I suspect that he would have extended this to screen ads if he had lived long enough to experience them.
The advertisers spend money on those ads, but they know the audience doesn't want to pay.. but fortunately, their products might be free too, because they can also be funded by ads (served to the same audience).
This intelligent design provides infinite money and infinite growth!
> There’s a reason the advertising industry exists.
I think we'd need to pause online ads to understand their true effect.. I know people buy things, but attributing these choices to the fact that an ad was displayed to the same user some days ago doesn't sound reliable to me.
That is... not interesting. That is how the ad supported web worked for the past 20 years.
Could be that based on your prompts it had just decided you were an adult, and started throwing ads at you.
I find it hilarious that they insert the adds that manual though. It would be so easy, to generate subconcious addds with an LLM. Like weave a slogan reminder into the conversation...
A woman needs this treatment after a brain injury. Iirc it clones her brain onto their servers. It's super experimental, it's a free surgery with a subscription service where you need to be within the supported area like cell towers.
If she stops paying for the service she will die. They promised to expand the support area to more countries and areas, but they end up raising prices as well as adding in advertising.
The advertising takes over her body at random contextual times and she basically does an ad read to the people in whatever situation.
It starts happening at the school where she works, she tells a kid about a certain product after he asks her about a problem. She's gonna lose her job because it creeps everyone out, so she has to pay more to get rid of the advertising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)
Probably not without changing the underlying response and tanking the benchmark ratings. Like I ask it to generate code, it tries to add a slogan reminder, now the comments on my code have Tide's slogan in them and the variables are all named "bleach".
Probably less humorous than that, but the underlying point stands. People will be extremely upset about their prompts being tinkered with, and any perceived degradation in quality will be quickly attributed to them. The hidden nature of them will probably cause speculation that they do the same on the higher tier plans.
It is quite interesting problem, because you could just respond with ok I want you to write whatever that library does. I don't want to pay for this.
If my business was a large CRUD app, like CRM I would be worried about smaller apps popping up on the market.
Always block the ads instead. Unconditionally, and without paying even one cent in extortion money. Your attention is yours. It's not theirs to sell to the highest bidder. You shouldn't have to pay in order to avoid being assaulted by ads. Blocking is legitimate self-defense.
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute."
Netflix and Disney opened this box long ago when they introduced their “cheap with ads” plan and it’s their most popular subscription types.
The invisible hand of the market has spoken and people prefer advertisements over paying more.
Sad reality but unless we change the incentives this is going to happen with everything.
Pay to see ads of products where you also pay to see ads :)
I’m not genuinely confused tbh. I’m more nothing this as a case study of the “LLM user profile” anecdata I’m collecting. Some may call it lowbrow to harp on failing basic literacy yet being compelled to pay real money for a chatbox to help with mental efforts, but here we are.