OpenAI begins testing ads on ChatGPT, ‘We will not accept money to influence the answer ChatGPT gives you,’ says Sam Altman

OpenAI will begin testing advertisements on ChatGPT in the coming weeks to increase revenue to cover its soaring costs.

The ads will initially appear in the United States for free and lower-tier subscribers, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot company said in a blog post.

Premium Pro and Enterprise subscribers will remain ad-free.

Since ChatGPT's launch in 2022, the Sam Altman-led company’s valuation has soared to $500 billion in funding rounds, surpassing that of any other private company. 

Some experts are speculating that it could go public with a trillion-dollar valuation.

However, the ChatGPT maker burns through cash at a furious rate, mostly on the powerful computing required to deliver its services.

Sam Altman announces on social media

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman listed out the principles behind ads in ChatGPT.

In a post on X, he said, “Here are our principles. Most importantly, we will not accept money to influence the answer ChatGPT gives you, and we keep your conversations private from advertisers. It is clear to us that a lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don't want to pay, so we are hopeful a business model like this can work.”

The company said in a blog post that it will keep ChatGPT “private from advertisers” and will “never sell your data to advertisers”.

Users will also have control over how their data is used by OpenAI. The company allows users to turn off personalisation and clear the data used for ads at any point.

However, if users don’t want to see ads in ChatGPT entirely, they will have to buy a ChatGPT subscription.

Altman’s company also says that it does not optimise for the time spent by users in ChatGPT while showing ads.

The company said that it is not launching ads widely yet but plans to start testing them for logged-in users in the US in the coming weeks.

“Ads will be clearly labelled and separated from the organic answer. You’ll be able to learn more about why you’re seeing that ad, or dismiss any ad and tell us why. During our test, we will not show ads in accounts where the user tells us or we predict that they are under 18, and ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health or politics,” it stated.

We are starting to test ads in ChatGPT free and Go (new $8/month option) tiers.

Here are our principles. Most importantly, we will not accept money to influence the answer ChatGPT gives you, and we keep your conversations private from advertisers.

It is clear to us that a lot… https://t.co/f9Dv53rWU7

— Sam Altman (@sama) January 16, 2026

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