Regarding the recent discovery by Reddit users of advertising clauses in the privacy policy and the global speculation that followed, OpenAI has officially responded. The company sent a letter to the media, clearly stating that the current ad testing is limited to free and some subscription users within the United States, and there are no plans to roll out this feature globally at the moment.

OpenAI emphasized that the company is adopting a very cautious and phased expansion strategy. The current focus is on learning from real user feedback rather than blindly expanding. According to previous operational data, the ad system runs on a completely separate system from the chat model, which means brands cannot interfere with or modify AI responses, ensuring the purity of the model's stance.

OpenAI

Regarding user privacy and experience, OpenAI promises that ads will only appear below the response content to minimize disruption to the conversation flow. Additionally, users under 18 will be automatically blocked from seeing such content. Although the ad model has raised concerns about the purity of the model, OpenAI insists that its primary goal is to explore more personalized service models while respecting privacy.

Currently, ChatGPT has reached 900 million weekly active users, and the number of individual paid subscriptions has also exceeded 50 million. Under this large user base, the introduction of an advertising business is seen as an important step in its commercialization efforts. However, for the time being, the majority of users around the world will continue to enjoy an ad-free and pure conversation experience.