OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Open to Ads in ChatGPT, Citing Instagram's 'Cool' Ad Experience

Sam Altman open to ads on ChatGPT, calls Instagram ads 'kinda cool'

It was only a matter of time before OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed the inevitable: ads in ChatGPT. On the debut episode of OpenAI's official podcast, Altman was asked whether ads might show up in ChatGPT. He didn't dodge the topic. In fact, he sounded casually on board: "We haven't done any advertising product yet. I kind of...I mean, I'm not totally against it. I can point to areas where I like ads. I think ads on Instagram, kinda cool. I bought a bunch of stuff from them. But I am, like, I think it'd be very hard to...I mean, take a lot of care to get right." The idea that Instagram ads are "cool" never gets a proper follow-up in the episode, but the real takeaway is that the door to advertising in ChatGPT is cracked open. OpenAI hasn't needed to rely on ads, largely thanks to unprecedented levels of venture capital. In March, the company raised $40 billion -- the largest private tech funding round in history. That followed $6.6 billion from Microsoft and Nvidia in Oct. 2024. Just last week, OpenAI secured a $200 million contract with the US Department of Defense. The company needs that kind of capital. Keeping ChatGPT operational reportedly costs upwards of $3 to $4 billion a year. Operating at that scale means revenue models may eventually shift from experimental to inevitable. According to The Verge, ChatGPT has 20 million subscribers, and OpenAI projects $12.7 billion in revenue for 2025. Altman isn't the first to consider advertising inside an AI chatbot. Google has been experimenting with native ads in Gemini. The concept has precedent, even if unofficial. This also isn't the first time ads have come up in the context of ChatGPT. In a 2024 discussion at Harvard Business School, Altman described advertising as a "last resort" for OpenAI -- a path he clearly wanted to avoid. By March of this year, that stance had softened. In an interview, he admitted, "Maybe there's a tasteful way we can do ads, but I don't know." Just a few months later, Altman's tone has shifted again. He's more direct and open and clearly thinking through how ads could fit into ChatGPT's future. OpenAI hasn't provided any specifics yet, but the idea is on the table. As companies like OpenAI and Google pivot toward AI-powered search, the incentive to insert paid messaging grows stronger. Ads may not be here yet, but it appears the infrastructure and the intent are starting to align. Alternatively, ChatGPT ads could be more like something many people are already familiar with: A slick T-shirt slipped between prompt responses, just like Instagram slots ads between stories. For now, at least, we don't have to imagine what that looks like.

OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman airs his thoughts on ads in ChatGPT: 'I'm not totally against it...I think ads on Instagram, kinda cool'

We all know that if a company provides a service for free, then it's being funded through things such as affiliate marketing, shopping links, or data scraping. The most common method is, of course, advertising, and it's absolutely everywhere, though there's one sector that's yet to be really hit by it, and that's AI. But if the thoughts of OpenAI's CEO are anything to go by, it won't be long before you'll see them in chatbots. The CEO in question is Sam Altman, and he's certainly never been one to shy away from expressing his views on everything AI. Now we get to hear more of his thoughts in the first episode of OpenAI's podcast, where over 40 minutes, topics such as the future of ChatGPT and artificial general intelligence are chewed over with the show's host, Andrew Mayne. Much of the discussion doesn't broach anything we've not already heard about, but when Mayne asks Altman about the possibility of ChatGPT serving ads in its stream of hallucinated gibberish, the OpenAI boss is pretty open about it all. "We haven't done any advertising product yet. I kind of...I mean, I'm not totally against it. I can point to areas where I like ads. I think ads on Instagram, kinda cool. I bought a bunch of stuff from them. But I am, like, I think it'd be very hard to...I mean, take a lot of care to get right." On the point about getting ads in ChatGPT right, Altman explains it's a matter of trust. "People have a very high degree of trust in ChatGPT, which is interesting because AI hallucinates. It should be the tech that you don't trust that much." Wait, what? Did the boss of ChatGPT just say that one shouldn't trust it? Yes, yes he did. To be fair to Altman, hallucinations in LLMs (large language models) is something that is inherent to the technology and although one can do all kinds of things to either minimise the amount of false information they churn out or catch it early and prevent it from being issued, ultimately ChatGPT will always have a hallucination problem. I can't imagine any company would be happy to pay OpenAI to insert their adverts into ChatGPT for them to come out all wonky donkey, so it's perhaps not just a matter of the users' trust, but that of potential advertisers, too. Given just how much money OpenAI burns through to pay for all its massive AI servers and continual research, it's surely only a matter of time before ads start to appear in ChatGPT. I should imagine that they'll initially just take the form of a break in the flow of text, with a link to click on or a short video to watch, rather than being generated by the AI itself. But with generative AI seeping into every aspect of today's world of business, I wouldn't be too surprised if we do see the odd generated ad popping here and there, even if it's only in the form of an experimental ad. Because if Altman thinks Instagram ads are cool, then you just know it's a given.