OpenAI turns ChatGPT into an ad business. Can users still trust it?

The era of ad‑funded AI assistants has arrived. OpenAI is no longer just selling API access and subscriptions; it is turning ChatGPT itself into an advertising surface. That is a profound shift: the assistant that helps you draft emails or compare products is about to become a media channel. According to OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, this will be an iterative experiment that must protect privacy and user trust. The tension is obvious: the more valuable the ad product becomes, the more that trust is at risk. This piece looks at what is really changing, who stands to win or lose, and why Europe may end up drawing the red lines for everyone.

The news in brief

According to TechCrunch, OpenAI has started rolling out ads to users on the free and Go tiers of ChatGPT, beginning with the United States earlier this month. The move follows the company’s January announcement that it would introduce advertising as a new revenue stream for its consumer product.

At the India AI summit, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap described the ad rollout as an iterative process. He stressed that the company needs to get privacy and user trust right, and argued that, if implemented well, ads could enhance the product experience rather than degrade it. Lightcap asked observers to judge the approach over the coming months rather than on the first iteration.

OpenAI has not yet committed publicly to expanding ads beyond the US. TechCrunch cites industry reports that OpenAI is charging around 60 US dollars per thousand impressions, with a minimum 200,000‑dollar spend for advertisers. The Information reports that Shopify is letting its merchants advertise in ChatGPT via its Shop Campaigns network, with brands like Target, Williams‑Sonoma and Adobe among early testers.

Why this matters

This is not just another ad product launch. It signals that the business model for mainstream AI assistants is crystallising: free access funded by advertising, with subscriptions and API usage on top. That is effectively Google’s search playbook, ported into a conversational interface.

The winners, at least initially, are obvious. OpenAI gets a new revenue stream that is less volatile than enterprise contracts and less capped than subscriptions. Large brands gain access to a highly engaged, high‑intent environment: people ask ChatGPT for recommendations, comparisons and instructions. That is prime territory for product placement and sponsored suggestions.

For users, the picture is mixed. On one hand, ads may subsidise continued free access at scale, something Sam Altman has emphasised when defending OpenAI’s approach against rivals like Anthropic, which spent heavily on Super Bowl branding instead. On the other hand, the assistant that previously felt like an impartial helper will now have a financial incentive to steer your attention.

The biggest short‑term losers are likely smaller advertisers and privacy purists. A 60‑dollar CPM and a 200,000‑dollar minimum commitment put ChatGPT ads firmly in the brand‑campaign bucket, not the long tail of self‑serve small and medium businesses. And because an AI assistant sits so close to intimate user intent and context, any misstep in targeting or data usage will be amplified.

Put bluntly: it is very hard to be both your trusted advisor and a paid promoter. Search engines have been wrestling with that conflict for two decades. In a chat interface, where the model synthesises a single answer instead of a list of links, the line between answer and advertisement becomes even harder to see.

The bigger picture

OpenAI’s move fits a broader industry pivot from pure model building to distribution and monetisation. Over the past year, Google has tested ads inside its AI Overviews; Perplexity has experimented with sponsored results in its AI search; Meta keeps hinting at commerce and ad formats around its assistants in WhatsApp and Instagram. Once an assistant becomes a daily habit, the temptation to attach an ad unit is irresistible.

Historically, the closest analogue is the early 2000s evolution of Google. Text ads started as small, clearly separated units next to organic results. Over time, the page filled with more commercial placements, richer formats, and subtle design tweaks that made ads harder to distinguish from organic results. Each step was incremental and described as an experiment or optimisation. The cumulative effect transformed the nature of web discovery and the financial incentives of the entire internet.

Something similar could happen with AI assistants. Today, OpenAI talks about ads that are additive and respectful. Tomorrow, we may see sponsored suggestions blended into answers, affiliate links in generated itineraries, or shoppable product carousels directly inside a chat thread. The advertising logic often moves faster than governance and product ethics.

OpenAI’s rivalry with Anthropic also matters here. By mocking Anthropic’s expensive Super Bowl campaign and framing OpenAI as the company that serves everyone for free at massive scale, Altman is implicitly committing to an ad‑supported mass market strategy. Anthropic, by contrast, is positioning Claude as a more premium, enterprise‑focused product. Those strategic choices will shape how each company navigates advertising: Claude can afford to remain mostly ad‑free for longer, while OpenAI is now visibly on the media‑platform path.

The European and regional angle

For European users and regulators, ads in generative AI are an almost perfect stress test of the continent’s digital rulebook. GDPR, the ePrivacy directive, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the upcoming AI Act all touch aspects of what OpenAI is about to do.

Under GDPR, any profiling and behavioural targeting based on chat history requires a clear legal basis, strong purpose limitation and tight data minimisation. The DSA adds obligations around transparency of recommender systems and bans certain manipulative dark patterns. The AI Act, while mostly aimed at high‑risk uses, will still require transparency when people interact with AI systems, and regulators are already signalling that covertly sponsored outputs will not be acceptable.

Europe is also more sensitive than the US to the blending of editorial and commercial content. German and French regulators, for instance, have long histories of policing misleading advertorials and native advertising. In a chat interface, where users often copy‑paste outputs directly into work documents, undisclosed sponsorship could easily cross the line into deceptive practice.

This opens space for European‑based competitors. Companies like Mistral, Aleph Alpha, DeepL or smaller national players can credibly offer subscription‑funded, ad‑free assistants with strong privacy guarantees, tailored to sector‑specific needs such as healthcare, law or public administration. For governments and regulated industries, an assistant that never sells ad inventory may be far more attractive than a slick, US‑centric product optimised for ad revenue.

If and when OpenAI brings ChatGPT ads to the EU, it will likely have to design a more constrained, transparency‑heavy format than in the US. That in turn could establish de facto global standards, just as GDPR effectively exported European privacy norms to the rest of the world.

Looking ahead

Over the next 12 to 18 months, expect OpenAI to move through several phases. First, it will refine basic ad formats with a small pool of large brands, gathering data on click‑through, user complaints and performance. This is where the company will try to prove Lightcap right that ads can be additive rather than annoying.

Next will come experimentation with more integrated experiences: sponsored recommendations when you ask for product comparisons, branded tools and plug‑ins that blur into the core assistant, and tight e‑commerce integrations like the partnership with Shopify. The boundary between content and commerce will steadily erode.

Only after that is it realistic to expect a serious international rollout. The legal and reputational risks of mis‑calibrated ad targeting are far higher in Europe than in the US. OpenAI will want a playbook and compliance infrastructure in place before asking EU data protection authorities and digital regulators to scrutinise its ad system.

Users should watch for a few signals. How prominently and clearly are ads labelled inside ChatGPT’s interface? Can you opt out of personalised targeting while still using the free tier? Does OpenAI use your chat history to measure ad performance or build advertising segments, and how easy is it to disable that? The answers to those questions will reveal whether the company truly prioritises trust over short‑term revenue.

The unanswered question is whether advertising is even the right model for general‑purpose AI assistants. Relying too heavily on ads tends to bias products toward engagement, controversy and commercial intent. That is not necessarily what we want from tools we increasingly use for learning, work and decision‑making.

The bottom line

OpenAI is taking a strategically inevitable but deeply fraught step by turning ChatGPT into an ad platform. If it is careful, ads could subsidise free access without fatally undermining trust. If it is not, we may end up with an AI ecosystem where your assistant is always also a salesperson. Europe’s regulatory push and user expectations will be crucial in determining which path wins. The real question for all of us: how much commercial influence are we willing to tolerate in the systems we increasingly rely on to think?