According to them, OpenAI is playing with advertising Financial Times.. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar told the newspaper she is considering the advertising business model and plans to “rethink” when and where ads are shown. In a follow-up statement, Friar stressed that there are “no active plans to continue advertising,” but it seems clear that the idea is under consideration. (The FT report highlighted the recent hiring of a high-profile advertising executive: Shivakumar Venkataraman, a former Google employee).
The creator of ChatGPT has so far relied on subscriptions to support the development of its generative AI tools. However, the cost of producing and operating these models is staggeringly high, and investors may only be willing to throw so many billions of dollars into the fire.
Still, the move seems uncomfortable for OpenAI founder Sam Altman. In recent fireside chat at Harvard Business Schoolwhen asked if the company could apply ads to expand access options, he replied that it would be “a last resort… I’m not saying OpenAI would never consider ads, but I don’t like them in general and I think ads plus AI is for me extremely disturbing.”