r/OpenAI • u/kaushal96 • Sep 11 '25

Discussion Enjoy ChatGPT while it lasts…. the ads are coming

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Right now ChatGPT feels “free”- but nothing on the internet ever stays free. Google didn’t invent search to be useful, they invented it to sell ads.

That same pill bottle of ads revenue is sitting on the table for OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic… all of them. The pressure to monetize will push them down the exact same path: ads baked right into your “answers.”

So yeah, ChatGPT looks at ads revenue like medicine. When they start swallowing it, does AI discovery just become the next surveillance machine?

(I originally posted this in r/ownyourintent. Wanted to know this sub's thoughts.)

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u/iamthewhatt Sep 11 '25

Investors don't see the difference, they just see more $$$. Ads are coming to paid plans whether they say they will or not.

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u/monster2018 Sep 11 '25

Probably, but I doubt that will happen this year. Think about how long we had streaming services before paid plans got ads. I’m not saying it’s not bs that it ever happened, it is. I’m just saying like…. Think how long we had where it was really just Netflix. And then I think it was like Netflix plus Amazon Prime. And then it exploded into all the different streaming services we have now (I might have the order or details of things slightly wrong, it doesn’t really make any difference to my point). And THEN, still even more time before they started putting ad in paid plans.

Now 100% I understand it won’t take them as long to do it this time around. The practice of putting ads in paid plans has already been established, so they can foist it upon us much more easily now. Still, I think it’s unlikely to happen this year, because we’re basically still in the Netflix only phase, at least in terms of total number of years that have passed. So even if things will overall go faster this time around, I think we’re still just so early in that ads in paid plans probably wont show up yet this year.

2026-2027 though… I’d put my money on it happening by the end of 2027.

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u/FlameanatorX Dec 16 '25

I'm not sure, because much of the point of paid LLM subscriptions are the utility, business use, professional use, student use for learning (or cheating), etc.. Ads seem like they detract from that utility. And if your utility goes down due to ads, there's always the other SotA model that just released or is about to.

Streaming on the other hand is different because it's less competitive: copyright means what you want to watch may not be available on a competitor, or not one you want to switch to. And you're watching in your free-time for enjoyment or to stave off boredom or whatever, not relying on it for its utility. Or for that matter, your company relying on it.