Report: OpenAI Tests Ads in ChatGPT

Establishment-critical narrative

OpenAI's forced pivot to advertising reveals a fundamental flaw in the business model of LLMs — the technology simply isn't economically viable without ads. The shift transforms ChatGPT from a tool serving users into a media company selling attention to advertisers, introducing perverse incentives where AI outputs will be manipulated to favor paid brands rather than providing neutral, factual responses to users. ChatGPT's memory feature amplifies these concerns by potentially enabling the exploitation of sensitive personal data.