Cheaper ChatGPT plans are coming — so are ads

The business of AI isn’t really one that has been fully fleshed out, we’re just a couple of years into this world of AI but with the cost of actually making these AI systems there’s always going to be a need to create a return for those businesses.

Now from the get-go there have been subscription plans with almost all the AI systems, these allow you to get access to the newer, smarter and faster models to use. Plus, you get to use it more and more without limitations.

But for sure there’s a huge subset of people who have absolutely never paid for AI, and frankly never well.

It’s the Google problem. When Google first launched it became a resource you simply had to be using – imaging trying to navigate the internet without it. So in time Google needed to monetise that.

Frankly, I wish Subscriptions had been around then – I’d much prefer to pay for Google to be ad-free than put up with the confusion of what is an ad and what’s not.

So ChatGPT is making plans for its future, with two announcements – firstly a lower cost subscription plan, secondly – ads are coming.

ChatGPT Go will be a low cost subscription at $13 per month giving you access to the latest ChatGPT model, and 10 times more messages than the free version, including image generation. Plus it will have a longer memory and context window – something that truely makes AI models far more useful.

That $13 a month compares to $30 for the Plus plan and $300 for the Pro plan.

Those Pro and Plus users though will be exempt from the big change coming, and that’s ads.

Just like Google, ChatGPT knows exactly what’s on your mind – you’re asking about it after all.

You might be planning a holiday, or searching up facts, bottom line, it allows for relevant and contextual advertising to form part of the results.

Ads in ChatGPT aren’t launching yet, but they’re about to start testing in the USA. To start with the ads will be at the bottom of answers given by ChatGPT when relevant to a current conversation – but that’s not to say it wont’ move up or be part of the answer context.

OpenAI – the creators of ChatGPT also say they won’t show ads to under 18’s or alongside topics such as health or politics.

With some transparency, the company has also published their core advertising principals, saying :

• Mission alignment: Our mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity; our pursuit of advertising is always in support of that mission and making AI more accessible.
• Answer independence: Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimized based on what’s most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labeled.
• Conversation privacy: We keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers, and we never sell your data to advertisers.
• Choice and control: You control how your data is used. You can turn off personalization, and you can clear the data used for ads at any time. We’ll always offer a way to not see ads in ChatGPT, including a paid tier that’s ad-free.
• Long-term value: We do not optimize for time spent in ChatGPT. We prioritize user trust and user experience over revenue.

It had to happen folks, and ChatGPT won’t be the only one.

Google hasn’t announced ads within Gemini, but their AI search results are a clear contender for revenue – the “search” of the future is yet to be clearly defined – pretty sure though AI is where it’s at.