Google DeepMind CEO 'Surprised' OpenAI Introduced Ads In ChatGPT, Issues Warning

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has expressed surprise at how quickly OpenAI has introduced advertisements in its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, OpenAI. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced it would soon start showing advertisements to ChatGPT users who aren't paying for a premium version of the chatbot.

"I'm a little bit surprised they've moved so early into that. I mean, look, ads, there's nothing wrong with ads, they funded much of the consumer internet. And if done well, they can be useful," Hassabis was quoted as saying by Axios.

Hassabis, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024, warned that rushing ads into AI assistants could erode user trust.

"But in the realm of assistants, and if you think of the chatbot as an assistant that's meant to be helpful - and ideally, in my mind, as they become more powerful, the kind of technology that works for you as the individual...there is a question about how ads fit into that model? You want to have trust in your assistant, so how does that work?" he questioned.

Hassabis said Google's Gemini AI chatbot currently has no plans to incorporate ads and that his team was thinking 'very carefully' about the idea. He added that Google is not feeling any immediate pressure to make 'knee-jerk decisions like that'.

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Ads In ChatGPT

Valued at over $500 billion, OpenAI has been losing more money than it makes and has been looking for ways to turn a profit. The latest effort by the San Francisco-based company is to monetise ChatGPT's more than 800 million users, most of whom use the chatbot for free.

OpenAI said the digital ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT's answers “when there's a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation".

Originally founded as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build better-than-human AI, OpenAI last year reorganised its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation.