OpenAI is toying with a move into ads, per the Financial Times. CFO Sarah Friar told the newspaper it’s weighing up an ads business model but plans to be “thoughtful” about when and where ads appear. Though, in a follow-on statement, she stressed it has “no active plans to pursue advertising.” But it seems clear the idea is on the table. (The FT’s reporting highlighted a recent high profile ad hire: Shivakumar Venkataraman, ex of Google.)
The ChatGPT-maker has so far relied on subscriptions to support development of its generative AI tools. But the cost of making and serving these models is eye-wateringly high, and there are only so many billions investors may be willing to fork into this fire.
Still, the move looks uncomfortable for OpenAI founder Sam Altman. In a recent fireside chat at Harvard Business School he was asked if it might adopt ads to broaden access options, and told delegates that 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 that ads-plus-AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me.”
