Trust for sale? When AI has to make money
ChatGPT is introducing ads. This isn’t just a change to the business model. It’s a shift in the boundary between help and influence in a conversation that’s increasingly replacing search engines and advisors.
January 16, 2026, is a date worth remembering. OpenAI officially announced that ChatGPT will start displaying ads. According to the announcements, they will appear in free plans and in a new, cheaper ChatGPT Go tier. They will take the form of clearly labeled blocks placed below responses, without interfering with the content generated by the model itself. In the announcements, it was emphasized that the ads won’t affect the quality of responses or how the system works.
That sounds like a technical compromise. In reality, it is a decision that closes a certain stage in the relationship between humans and AI and opens another—decidedly more “market-driven.” Because the moment the conversation is incorporated into the logic of advertising, not only does the funding model change. Users’ decision-making process changes as well.
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