Ads Are Coming to AI. Eventually.

Freedom from advertisements, they said. And for a while, they were right. We got used to paying an almost nominal fee and delving into a new sort of platform that freed us from the legacy platforms that had become completely choked with omnipresent advertising.

No, I’m not retelling the story of AI and search engines. I’m talking about television streaming and cable/satellite subscriptions. Years later, ads crept in. They grew in length and number. Like or not (few will like it), the same fate is likely for the AIs we take for granted as being advertisement-free right now.

"It's not an ad if we just keep repeating that it's not an ad."

You guys literally announced a partnership with Target right before this. You're handling this very badly and people are noticing. pic.twitter.com/mQhxNSwboS

— Benjamin De Kraker (@BenjaminDEKR) December 6, 2025

Why it’s inevitable:

OpenAI landed itself in hot water with the public last week when users rebelled against what they took to be advertisements appearing in ChatGPT. OpenAI insisted they were app suggestions and not ads, although, as former xAI engineer Benjamin De Kraker’s post above shows, it’s easy to see why users would think that.

Add to that the recent discovery of code for the implementation of ads in ChatGPT, and it only seemed like the logical next step in what everybody seems to fear (or know) is coming.

“I agree that anything that feels like an ad needs to be handled with care, and we fell short,
wrote OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen. “We’ve turned off this kind of suggestion while we improve the model’s precision. We’re also looking at better controls so you can dial this down or off if you don’t find it helpful.”

But running a company full of AI servers is extraordinarily expensive. In recent months, OpenAI has committed to spending $1.4 trillion in infrastructure deals. Google announced $75 billion in spending for its Gemini AI back in April.

While Google said in the ChatGPT drama aftermath that it won’t show ads under its “current plans” (key words, right there), I’d be more than surprised if AI firms didn’t find it necessary to offset some of the costs of running their AI once they’ve gotten us further hooked on making AI as common a household service as television.