Dado Ruvic/REUTERS
- OpenAI's ChatGPT boss says there are no live ads or ad tests running on the chatbot.
- Rumors of ads on ChatGPT have surfaced online.
- Its recent updates include a shopping feature, not traditional advertising.
ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users are worried that OpenAI, whose mission is to create artificial intelligence that benefits all of humanity, is starting to publish ads on the platform.
Screenshots of the ChatGPT interface showing what looks like a Target ad have been circulating on social media.
OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, however, dismissed those rumors in a post on X on Saturday.
"I'm seeing lots of confusion about ads rumors in ChatGPT. There are no live tests for ads — any screenshots you've seen are either not real or not ads. If we do pursue ads, we'll take a thoughtful approach," he said. "People trust ChatGPT and anything we do will be designed to respect that."
Earlier this week, an X user posted a screenshot on X of what he described as "ADS TO SHOP AT TARGET."
"If this is a 'feature,' let me turn it off," he added.
The link to shop at Target in the screenshot is likely related to a new shopping feature rather than any move by the company to include straight advertising on the platform.
In late September, OpenAI announced that it was taking the "first steps toward agentic commerce in ChatGPT with new ways for people, AI agents, and businesses to shop together."
With that, it launched an Instant Checkout feature built in conjunction with Stripe, a financial technology company.
When the bot is posed with a shopping question, ChatGPT shows the most relevant products from across the web, and if those products are supported by Instant Checkout, users can hit a "Buy" tab, OpenAI says on its website.
That's not to say ads won't be coming to ChatGPT at some point.
OpenAI has said it is considering advertising on the platform, which is perhaps unsurprising given its massive user base, a fraction of which are paying customers.
In a post on X in late November, developer Tibor Blaho said he had found code in ChatGPT's Android app that included references to "an ads feature."
"Scouring apps for yet-to-be-released features is a long-standing tech hobby, and sometimes it really does yield results. It's also entirely possible that what Blaho found is … something other than an ad product road map," Business Insider's Peter Kafka wrote at the time.
In any case, any plan by OpenAI to publish ads on ChatGPT appears to be on ice after the buzzy release of Google's Gemini 3 last month.
Altman told OpenAI employees in an internal Slack memo, seen by multiple outlets, that he was issuing a "code red" in response to the positive reception Gemini 3 has received. He said the company would allocate more resources to ChatGPT and delay the release of other products and features, including ads.
De Krake, Turley, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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