Beneath ChatGPT’s flattering persona lies a goldmine for advertisers: an AI chatbot that never gets tired of hawking clients’ wares.
New reporting by The Information has revealed some recent topics of conversation between OpenAI employees as they work to supply advertisers with a teeming new audience to manipulate.
The plans are far from final, though they give us a look at what soon may become the norm for ChatGPT. One conversation between OpenAI staffers, for example, involved giving sponsored chatbot results “preferential treatment” over non-sponsored results, anonymous employees told The Information.
This could look like a user asking how much ibuprofen to take for a headache receiving a promoted ad for Advil in the chatbot’s response. Meanwhile, actual results on correct dosage may be brushed to the side, or buried under a mountain of ad text (just think about how many sponsored search results you have to scroll past during a typical Google search these days.)
Given that ChatGPT has a self-reported audience of 900 million weekly users, it’s difficult to imagine the consequences of a setup like this. OpenAI isn’t numb to the negative feelings sponsored results are likely to stir up, either.
The Information reports that other internal conversations focused on the best ways to serve ads without putting off users entirely, who might feel less inclined to go on hours-long chat benders if they feel corporate advertisers are looking on like a third-wheel. One ad mockup shared with the publication showed ads only appearing after a second prompt with ChatGPT, to avoid bombarding users with sponsored content too early in their conversations.
News that OpenAI was experimenting with cramming commercials into ChatGPT came in early December, after a software sleuth uncovered a dozen lines of code in the chatbot’s beta app for Android referencing things like “feature ads” and “search ads carousel.”
“As ChatGPT becomes more capable and widely used, we’re looking at ways to continue offering more intelligence to everyone,” an OpenAI spokesperson told The Information. “As part of this, we’re exploring what ads in our product could look like. People have a trusted relationship with ChatGPT, and any approach would be designed to respect that trust.”
When exactly the ChatGPT adpocolypse come to pass remains to be seen, but with so much money riding on the effort, it’d be astonishing if it didn’t pan out.
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