I guess we’re about to find out if this helps put out the massive pile of burning cash that OpenAI is trying to deal with, but I know nobody that wants this.
OpenAI claims we’re near AGI and this is the best strategy they have? Oy vey!
I doubt any consumer of ChatGPT wants ads, and even if they did, it would be a specific kind of ad. They specifically would not want ads if they cannot identify them as ads (like google has eventually done on the search page) or if they are not good ads.
I'm guessing ChatGPT will be able to do the same for me, especially since it probably knows me better than Instagram at this point, just given all the things I ask it.
If they do it right, it will be helpful. The big question is will they do it right.
The point is do users want ads? Or more reasonably, should platforms offer a paid, ad-free, experience.
If you’re angry about it and ALSO don’t want to pay then I’m sure OpenAI doesn’t mind losing you as a customer.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1411110/consumer-percept...
> > Hey, ChatGPT, I need a new pair of shoes!
> Of course, Nike has a great pair that just came out. Would you like me to purchase them for you?
They claim they are close to creating a Machine God that threatens all human life... but this is the best business plan it can come up with?
Maybe your omnipotent machine could come up with that cure for cancer you keep saying it will, and then you sell that? Or design an innovative new battery? Or, hell, let's be more realistic: Why can't it make really fun iOS games that you can sell? Or generate Marvel quality blockbusters, that should bring in at least a few billion.
Sam Altman. It is his last resort, he said some time ago (which is not true, regulation/"slowing down the pace of AI" seems to be the latest).
That would be an obvious question to ask their chatbot.
I mean, not to be rude to this and all sibling commenters, but obviously everyone? I feel like this comment has no basis in reality.
People want things cheaper and they tolerate ads. Those two things put together means everything gets ads and gets cheaper? YouTube exists for free and costs billions to run. Companies A/B test ad tiers and paid non-ad tiers, and the results are always the same.
I do not want cheaper, I want quality at a reasonable price. Sometimes I even accept an unreasonable price for the quality (think Apple stuff). I will never buy crap at cheapest bargain prices.
Cheap clothes barely survive a couple of washes, good quality clothes survive much, much longer. Yes, they are more expensive short term, quite a bit less expensive long term.
Also, not once, ever, was my buying decision influenced by an ad. What influences my decisions is the problems, the defects i will have, or not, with what I chose to buy. Usually, the longer time it works the more expensive it is.
AFAICT the flow is click ad then get an agent that is grounded in the official sales resources. This should mean the agent has the latest and canonical product catalog, offers, etc. so the users own agent doesn’t need to search on the web.
Fun ideas - can my main agent invoke these as a sub-agent, so I can get offers from multiple competitors? Can I loop them into a conversation to debate their products and observe which wins on my objective function?
Concerns - of course if the harness injects (or can be prompt hacked to inject) personal information then it’s a big problem.
> OpenAI claims we’re near AGI and this is the best strategy they have? Oy vey!
Where did they say it’s the best? Obviously a short-term bridge strategy to drive “mundane” economic activity and juice the IPO. They are of course working on drug discovery and nuclear reactor plasma physics too. A good strategy has a portfolio of plays.
Any basis for believing this?
But it’s a huge market segment already: NYSE:CRM, NYSE:HUBS would be some starting points.
Also, just analogizing to how consumers interact with retail, you have reps you can talk to, this is a proven model for millennia, and it’s one of the big gaps in online sales.
“This is not in fact a sales rep” would be a reasonable objection. “People do not want sales reps” is a weird position to take IMO.
(Law on this goes all the way back to Carbolic Smoke Ball)
So who is liable? Nobody. This is a big tech company, to which laws do not apply.
It’s not the advertising companies of course, as you said they don’t control the system.
And it cannot be the models, because they don’t have personhood.
So, I guess it’s on nobody? Funny how those things happen to work, uh
/s
Naturally then the company could turn around and sue the maker of the AI for damages and this is the bit that’s less tested to date.
But it’s clear the answer isn’t “nobody” is liable. So if this AI marketing widget makes up false claims about a product that’s going to be a big problem for companies that put an AI in front of their customers.
Also investors (particularly non-AGI-pilled) want to see revenue number go up, regardless of AGI. This juices the IPO.
Instead they are selling a dream to the gullible, and advertisements to go along with that dream.
That said AGI is a fuzzy term and you’ll model the world poorly if you treat it as a binary state.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/openai-releases-its-lat...
"OpenAI released its latest model, GPT-6 Astra, on Thursday, with company President Greg Brockman calling it the beginning of the artificial general intelligence (AGI) era."
But they're still peddling ads instead of improving the world. How odd.
This move tells us they don’t think they’re anywhere near AGI, directly contradicting their bombast and puffery on the subject.
It’s always he guys who steal the technology from the inventors that try to present the technology far beyond what it is.
Signed, that guy at google who did some stuff about this and had it taken away.
Currently their actions completely contradict their claims of emergent intelligence.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/openai-releases-its-lat...
AGI makes a lot better argument if everyone is in idiocracy.
IIRC, a part of the backstory of Idiocracy is the development of pervasive and good enough AI/automation, which enabled society to get that dumb without immediately collapsing.
Here I foolishly thought that that was the job of ChatGPT itself.
Ads are cancer on content. No one wants them. They only serve to make the presentation of useful content worse.
If I need something I usually have a need first, then I research then I buy. It's never the thing in the ads in between that turns out to be best.
Synthetic humans wearing the faces of your loved ones surreptitiously cross your path, and casually mention their favorite products and services.
It also allows them to subtly influence the messaging. It would be like if somebody tried to not bring out the Heinz at a family gathering. It just wouldn't be the same, because of the subtle messaging that has been inserted into the content. How could you trust them?
TFA is connecting you with an official sales rep after you click an ad. Maybe best to consider this a play to take over market share from the existing sales bots? (And thence likely support chatbots too.)
Sam Altman famously said in 2024 "I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model." So perhaps we could ask him first what his other plans were and why they didn't work.
I thought AGI was supposed to replace most knowledge workers and they'd pocket the savings that their customers enjoyed by not having to pay a work force. That's what their valuation is based upon.
> Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts will not have ads.
Or, now lets what the enshittification movement can do to this space.
I think pushing back with cancellations is the only way forward.
The future is open source, no subscriptions, no purchases, 100% free and community supported.
The sooner software gets to this point, the world will be a much more better place rather than everything being a subscription.
Ads in their current form are predominantly a nuisance and malware. Only incidentally do they help the person actually find what they are looking for. This has to change.
I the end someone pays for open source and often it's some developer with his spare time.
Yes to open source, but yes to money for the developers.
Besides, who will pay for the compute of LLMs in your utopian future?
What’s wrong with this choice ?
Tell me a story of when a service introduced ads and that ended up being a great thing for users ? Because I don't know any. Instead I know many stories where ads poisoned and destroyed the service and turned the Internet into a shit show.
Oh, but in this case, dystopia is highly unlikely, right ?
In the example of a "sponsored agent" at the top, how many people are going to think "chat with us" is just a way to continue the conversation? How soon before openai removes the friction of clicking that entirely?
this is what openai said before: "Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT’s responses. Ads are separate and clearly labeled." https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001047-ads-in-chatgpt
Do they need to rewrite that section? Because in the video there's an LLM chatbot inside the chatgpt app writing answers on behalf of "Heirloom grocery"
This isn’t that hard to understand.
I don't understand why they still insist on inserting this line in every talk about advertising. Just be honest and address your piece to advertisers, no need to keep doing this pathetic and laughable sugarcoating.
The point of ads is that one of those services will pay openai so that their services will be more prominent than the others.
Sure you can have some agents try to do this via web but realistically most fail.
It’s worth it. Already saved me more than $30,000 in a business transaction by negotiating for me.
I’m not going to use a CPA in the coming tax seasons either. I’m determined to not pay for any white collar labor if I can avoid it.