ChatGPT Moves Forward With CEO's 'Last Resort'

It's not uncommon for businesses and business leaders to change their minds on key points as information and landscapes change, and it's safe to say that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has undergone a bit of a change of heart.

This week, the company announced some rather significant changes to ChatGPT that Altman called "uniquely unsettling" and a "last resort" for the company less than two months ago.

'A Last Resort'

During an event at Harvard University back in 2024, Altman spoke on the possibility of ChatGPT rolling out ads on the platform, as he made it pretty clear that he was not a fan of the idea.

Altman went as far as to call the concept of ads mixed with AI "uniquely unsettling" and said that as a business model, using ads would be a "last resort."

"Ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me," Altman said during an event at Harvard University in May 2024. "I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model."

That said, Altman did indicate he was willing to do it if necessary.

"I would do it if that was the only way to get everyone in the world access to great services," Altman said. "But if we could find something that doesn't do that, I would do that."

ChatGPT Moves Forward With Ads

On Friday, Altman and OpenAI announced that it would be "testing" ads on ChatGPT's free tier and lowest premium tier, less than two months after Altman called such a move a "last resort" for the company.

The company shared a series of "ad principles" before the rollout.

• Answer Independence: Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimized based on what's most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labeled.
• Conversation Privacy: We keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers, and we never sell your data to advertisers.
• Choice and Control: You control how your data is used. You can turn off personalization, and you can clear the data used for ads at any time. We'll always offer a way to not see ads in ChatGPT, including a paid tier that's ad-free.
• Long-term value: We do not optimize for time spent in ChatGPT. We prioritize user trust and user experience over revenue.

"Our mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity; our pursuit of advertising is always in support of that mission and making Al more accessible," the company wrote in its mission alignment.

Altman Addresses the Change

Following the announcement, Altman addressed the change with a post on X.

"Most importantly, we will not accept money to influence the answer ChatGPT gives you, and we keep your conversations private from advertisers," Altman said in a post on X.

Altman explained that they were finding an excess of users who wanted to use "a lot of AI" but did not want to pay for the services.

"It is clear to us that a lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don't want to pay, so we are hopeful a business model like this can work," Altman added.

As for what the ads will look like, Altman used Instagram's targeted ads as an example.

"An example of ads I like are on Instagram, where I've found stuff I like that I otherwise never would have. We will try to make ads ever more useful to users," Altman said.

It's worth noting, however, that Instagram ads are successful due in large part to the sheer amount of personal data the app collects from its users.

If ChatGPT will "keep your conversations private from advertisers," as Altman suggests, it's not clear how he intends to make the ads comparable to Instagram.

Regardless, this is a clear shift from Altman's opinion on ads less than two years ago.