December 8, 2024, 8:27 am | Read time: 3 minutes
ChatGPT has experienced a meteoric rise in just a few years. But such success usually comes at a cost. Artificial intelligence could, therefore, soon be displaying advertising.
Many companies finance themselves through advertising. This is not only practical but also a very profitable source of income. Larger corporations, in particular, use this option. So far, the US software company OpenAI has refrained from doing so, but in the future, its in-house AI ChatGPT could display advertising. TECHBOOK explains how this is supposed to work.
Why ChatGPT Could Soon Display Advertising
Streaming services are a very good example of the integration of advertising. While most providers operated their platforms without advertising a few years ago, this has changed significantly over time: more and more subscription offers and more and more advertising. Advertising is simply an easy and profitable source of income. If you want to do without ads, you have to switch to a paid or more expensive subscription. ChatGPT could also use a similar model.
The training of ChatGPT is associated with high costs. To cover these costs, OpenAI needs additional sources of income. Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of OpenAI, explained in an interview with the Financial Times that the company is therefore considering integrating advertising into ChatGPT. The plan is to integrate advertising into the free version of ChatGPT. Paying subscribers are to be spared this for the time being.
One reason for the high costs is the aforementioned extensive AI training for ChatGPT. More and more data requires a larger training workload. The costs for the computing power required must be covered in some way. The company also aims to be financially profitable in the long term and not repeatedly invest a large part of its budget in AI training. In the future, these costs are to be partly covered by advertising.
New Terms and Conditions Next Streaming Service with Advertising? Paramount+ Wants to Change Subscription Structure
Streaming subscription only Popular RTL show flies out of free TV
According to insiders Apple itself is not yet entirely convinced by this product
Freemium vs. Premium
The freemium and premium model, with or without advertising, is already widespread on other platforms. If you don’t want to see ads, you have to pay extra. Users of the free subscription then pay indirectly via advertisements. This model is also conceivable for ChatGPT. The AI competitor model Perplexity, for example, has already been using advertisements for several weeks.
However, it is still unclear when and how advertising will be integrated into ChatGPT. Friar said that they still have to weigh up internally what form advertising can take in order not to jeopardize the user experience. The company does not yet have any active plans to run advertising.
It is conceivable that the free model of ChatGPT will be offered with ads, while the premium version will remain ad-free for the time being. The content or conditions of the premium versions could also change over time – similar to YouTube. There, some paying users now also have to put up with advertising.
OpenAI’s considerations are not unfounded. While it started out as a start-up, the company is increasingly developing into one of the big players on the market and is already competing with Google and the like. According to the US tech magazine 9to5Mac, AI training costs around five billion US dollars a year. OpenAI itself has an estimated total value of 150 billion US dollars.