The illusion
Since the popularization of AI up to today, every AI company has been trying to build a certain set of features and tools aimed at keeping people glued to that magical chat window for as long as possible. Not necessarily because of subscriptions and direct monthly revenue, but because of creating the illusion of a perfect personal assistant that is always there to help you.
This assistant evolves (through new models), adapts, and over time becomes better and better at executing its tasks, and lately it has even become cheaper than ever. With the introduction of the new GO plan, for just $8 you get an unquestioning assistant that will always help you (until you hit the limit, of course, and then you pay a bit more for an even better one) in solving complex tasks, automating boring work, writing code, fixing bugs, and all the things you don’t want to actively deal with, creating a bigger and bigger habit and dependence on using it for less and less money, or even through “generous” free tiers.
What makes this illusion so effective is how few obstacles exist between the user and the system. You open a chat window, you ask for help, and the help arrives. Over time, that simplicity reshapes expectations. Assistance starts to feel less like a product and more like something that simply exists in the space around you.
Good Intentions Don’t Pay for Infrastructure
Running large-scale AI systems is not just a question of models and innovation, but of infrastrucutre, cost, and viability. Subscriptions help, but they were never designed to carry the full weight of a product that millions of people use daily, often intensively, and often without paying anything at all. A monthly fee captures commitment from a small group of users, but it leaves the majority of usage unresolved. When a system becomes this central in everyday workflows, relying solely on subscriptions stops being a smart strategy and it starts being a losing battle. At that point, the question is no longer whether another revenue model will appear, but which one can realistically support the scale that has already been created. And the answer, is ads.
Shift in how people already use ChatGPT
It is no secret that AI systems like ChatGPT are being used for an ever expanding range of tasks, and that no two people use them in exactly the same way. What has changed more noticeably, however, is not the technology itself, but the expectations we bring to it.
With all the new capabilities and advantages, we have become lazier than ever before. We don’t want to wait 30 seconds for ChatGPT to display “thinking..”, we don’t want incorrect answers, we want a finished solution, business ideas, and we want it immediately, and delivered with the phrase “make no mistakes.”
This shift is especially visible outside of purely technical work. We no longer want to think about where to go for dinner. We want the top five restaurants. We do not want to browse, compare, or explore. We want the best clothing, the best hotels, the best options, filtered and ranked without additional context.
We are not opposed to influence. We are opposed to recognizing it. We want advertising, as long as it does not announce itself as such. We want it as a generic AI answer, helpful, and indistinguishable from everything else the AI already provides.
That shift did not begin with ads.
It began with how we chose to use the tool.
Ads Won’t Look Like Ads
According to OpenAI’s own description, ads in ChatGPT aren't designed to merge into the model’s responses. Ads will not alter, shape, or influence what the AI say and the generated answer remains independent.
Instead, ads are meant to appear as separated elements, displayed outside of the model’s response itself. They will be visually distinct, explicitly labeled, and positioned in a way that makes it clear what comes from the AI and what is sponsored. This means ads will appear below an answer, not inside it, and only when there is a relevant commercial context tied to the conversation.
From a technical standpoint, this separation is critical. It preserves the integrity of the model’s output while allowing monetization to exist alongside it. OpenAI has been explicit that advertisers do not influence answers, do not gain access to conversations, and do not receive user prompts or responses.
And we know that will never happen. For sure.
This isn’t about trust.
It is tempting to frame the current state of AI around trust. We ask whether OpenAI will keep its promises, whether they respect user privacy, or whether the line between a helpful answer and a paid advertisement will remain intact.
When a company’s way of survival depends on satisfying massive capital investments, optimization follows the money, not the truth. If the revenue model shifts toward advertising, the AI won't be your assistant. It will become a salesman designed to manipulate your decision.
This isn't an accidental "drift." It is the inevitable result of a business model that views the user not as a customer to be served, but as a resource to be harvested. Every "reasonable" decision to prioritize sponsored content would be a dangerous path for a product.
The mistake most users make is trusting the system as it exists today. They enjoy the current feature set while ignoring everyting else.
What Changes
When ads arrive, the interface may look almost the same, with only a subtle addition such as an ad banner at the bottom. What changes first is not the output, but the relationship. The system is no longer optimized solely around usefulness. It now operates within an additional constraint: revenue. Even when ads are technically separated from answers, their presence alters what the system exists to maximize. Attention becomes measurable. Time spent inside the interaction starts to matter in ways it did not before.
Conclusion
The introduction of ads into systems like ChatGPT is not a betrayal, nor is it an unexpected twist. It is a familiar stage in the lifecycle of products that need to sustain themselves financially as they grow.
For users, the challenge is not to reject these systems, but to understand them more clearly. Advertising does not automatically erase value, nor does it immediately compromise usefulness. What it does is change the set of incentives the system operates under, and that change deserves attention.
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