If ads are clearly labeled as "ad" or "sponsored", and they only appear for free users, I think seeing ads is a pretty reasonable price to pay for those who want to use the service for free.
If they're not labeled, or are shown even to paying users, I think that's a problem.
I have made some purchasing decisions on expensive products based on analysis ChatGPT has done for me, if they can capitalize on that, it could be a decent way to make some money, as long as they remain unbiased and basically just function as an affiliate marketer. Sometimes I do want to be sold on something.
I just canceled my $200/month GPT-Pro subscription. 5.2-Pro is in decline -- it has been getting noticeably worse at a steady rate since introduction. At this point, it's not appreciably better for most queries than Claude 4.5 Opus, and Opus is roughly 10x faster.
Good thing I didn't develop an unnecessary dependency on this product, so now I don't have to suffer through its enshittification. It's almost like it was obvious this was going to happen years ago.
By the way don't sleep on this detail:
> The banner ads will appear in the coming weeks for logged-in users of the free version of ChatGPT *as well as the new $8 per month ChatGPT Go plan*
Even if you pay for the product, you're still the product. If we don't own our software, our software will own us.
I’d rather they served ads. The economy is somewhat broken right now, with the way these things are bypassing all regular information channels. This will hopefully create lots and lots of new business for 3rd parties again.
Ideally, they’ll introduce a whole new level of targeting relevance, which will be good for both advertisers and prospects.
It's not about how it starts. It always starts small and measured, but once you open up to ads, you open up the pandora's box of enshittification paths.
In six months, we will hear about how OpenAI innovatively created an AI ad auction and marketplace that, effectively, enables companies to purchase ad space within the inference pipeline, complete with "anonymous" demographic targeting and all the advertising fun things that Google and Meta are frightened of.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 39.5 ms ] threadIf they're not labeled, or are shown even to paying users, I think that's a problem.
I just canceled my $200/month GPT-Pro subscription. 5.2-Pro is in decline -- it has been getting noticeably worse at a steady rate since introduction. At this point, it's not appreciably better for most queries than Claude 4.5 Opus, and Opus is roughly 10x faster.
By the way don't sleep on this detail:
> The banner ads will appear in the coming weeks for logged-in users of the free version of ChatGPT *as well as the new $8 per month ChatGPT Go plan*
Even if you pay for the product, you're still the product. If we don't own our software, our software will own us.
Ideally, they’ll introduce a whole new level of targeting relevance, which will be good for both advertisers and prospects.
Or to put it another way, I'll be interested to see how long before the ads become inseparable from the actual content of the response.
Our approach to advertising - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46649577 - Jan 2026 (227 comments)