OpenAI has announced plans to introduce advertising in ChatGPT. Initially, this will be tested in the US and only for users of either the free ChatGPT plan or the cheaper Go plan. The ads will appear at the end of the organic response. They will be clearly marked as advertising and will not affect the response itself.
With roughly 800 million weekly users and only 5 percent paying customers, OpenAI is currently facing a funding problem: Operating current AI models like GPT-5.2 generates high costs with each inference due to the models’ size and complexity. What CEO Sam Altman had previously considered a “last resort” is now a necessary part of OpenAI’s revenue model.
The risk for OpenAI is high: So far, no AI company has been able to prove that ads in AI responses can generate significant revenue streams. Perplexity’s attempt last year can be considered a failure. OpenAI will have to prove that it can generate significant revenue with this model, revenue that is in a healthy proportion to its committed spending and obligations for data centers and infrastructure in the coming years.
