Toby Howell

Ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me, he said back in 2024.

And yet, here we are.

OpenAI's official position is that ads do not influence responses and that the model's output

will remain objectively useful.

But it begs the question, if Altman hated ads, why is he embracing them now?

And of course, it comes down to money, money, money.

According to recent reports, annualized revenue at OpenAI exceeded $20 billion a year.

But in case you forgot, OpenAI has raised roughly a bajillion dollars.

So bringing in that ad revenue will help OpenAI put its big boy monetization pants on.

Neil now begins the delicate tight wire walk nearly every internet company has had to walk at one point or another between making money and not pissing off their users.

And these are going to be ads that hopefully feel native to the experience.

Ads are going to be matched to the current conversation topic.

So for instance, Neil and I are saying, what should I wear to Davos?

An ad will not just come up for McDonald's.

It will come up for, hey, here's some nice slacks or here's something that,

a sweater that brings out the color in your eyes.

It's basically going to be contextual and they promise not to sell user data or anything like that.

And there is some interesting things you can do with a chatbot environment when it comes to ads.

You can ask follow-up questions to the ads, like say, hey, I actually don't like this color.

It doesn't bring out the blue in my eyes.