Ads creep into the bot that was meant to stay clean OpenAI looks poised to repeat the same clangers that turned Amazon and YouTube into rolling billboards by shoving ads into ChatGPT. The ChatGPT experience has so far been blissfully free of sales patter. There are paid tiers, but the bot never trie...

My only question is, “What took them so long?”

OpenAI looks poised to repeat the same clangers that turned Amazon and YouTube into rolling billboards by shoving ads into ChatGPT.

The ChatGPT experience has so far been blissfully free of sales patter. There are paid tiers, but the bot never tried to flog you anything. Google Search went the other way and let ads steer buying choices, which trained people to skim past half the page.

Fresh code strings in the ChatGPT Android app show OpenAI drifting towards the same trap. Tibor spotted references to an “ads feature” with “bazaar content”, “search ad” and a “search ads carousel” in the 1.2025.329 beta. The whole thing looks like the same clutter that turned Amazon’s listings into a parade of sponsored tat.

If OpenAI pushes ahead, it could jolt the web economy because the outfit knows far more about users than Google ever did. It sees prompts that reveal what people want, dread and intend to buy. Personalised adverts wedged into that flow would make old-style targeting look prehistoric.