To support the huge infrastructure costs behind large models, OpenAI has finally taken a controversial step towards "commercialization." Starting February 9th, adult users of the free version of ChatGPT and the low-cost Go plan in the United States will begin to see "sponsored content" during conversations.

If you want to use it for free, the cost might be "watching ads."

OpenAI officially admitted that the company has not yet turned a profit, and maintaining the free version requires massive hardware and R&D costs. This ad introduction is positioned as a "test," with ads being personalized based on the user's current conversation topic and history. For example, when you ask ChatGPT for a dinner recipe, the interface may display relevant sponsored links for meal services or ingredient delivery at appropriate times.

Where is the boundary of privacy? OpenAI has set three rules.

To ease users' privacy concerns, OpenAI clarified the bottom line for ad placement:

  1. Content Isolation: Ads will be clearly labeled and strictly separated from the official answers generated by the model, without affecting the quality of AI responses.

  2. Privacy Protection: Advertisers can only see aggregated display and click data, and cannot access users' specific chat records, personal information, or "memory" modules.

  3. Sensitive Avoidance: When dealing with sensitive topics such as mental health, medical care, and politics, the system will automatically block ad placements.

Competitor Anthropic took advantage of the situation to "betray."

At the same time OpenAI announced its advertising plan, the old rival Anthropic responded quickly. They not only promised that their Claude robot would remain ad-free forever, but also aired a sarcastic commercial during the Super Bowl, stating, "The pure experience of talking to AI should not be disturbed by ads."

If you are a heavy-duty obsessive-compulsive user who doesn't want to be disturbed while chatting, the current solutions are only two: either upgrade to a premium paid package like Plus or Pro, or accept fewer daily free message quotas in exchange for a clean interface.

The second half of AI commercialization is still uncertain—whether it will be "ad-centric" or "subscription-driven." The experiment initiated by OpenAI has just begun.