OpenAI is toying with a move into ads, per the Financial Times. CFO Sarah Friar told the newspaper it’s weighing an ads business model, with plans to be “thoughtful” about when and where ads appear. In a follow-on statement, Friar 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, formerly 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 of dollars that investors may be willing to fork into the fire.
Still, the move looks uncomfortable for OpenAI founder Sam Altman. In a recent fireside chat at Harvard Business School, after being asked if the company might adopt ads to broaden access options, he said 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 that ads-plus-AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me.”
