As 2026 approaches, the world of AI continues to evolve daily, unlocking new capabilities through updates and incorporating new ways to interact with chatbots.
That said, this week was resolutely focused on the world of advertising within AI chatbots. It all started when $200 per month ChatGPT subscribers started noticing “app suggestions” in their conversations.
Ads are inevitable
This sentence seems reassuring, but it is also accompanied by the essential qualifier “current projects”.
This is where Google’s position becomes interesting. You could say that Geminis don’t do that today, and that’s true. He may insist that your chats will not be used for advertising purposes, and that is also true.
But OpenAI just showed the industry what happens when the business model meets the reality of massive compute bills and multi-trillion dollar growth. Eventually, something has to give, even if the company has gone backwards for now.
AI assistants are quickly becoming the new place for search, recommendations, and app discovery. This is exactly the territory where ads thrive.
And even if Gemini is holding its own for now, it’s hard to imagine a future in which none of these platforms explore “suggestions” as part of the chat window, especially when one of the biggest players has already tested the waters.
Gemini in its current form is user-friendly, focused and refreshingly non-stop. But if this week proved anything, it’s that the age of ads in AI assistants is coming. OpenAI unleashed it, users reacted exactly as expected, and the rest of the industry is watching closely.
The real question is whether Gemini remains ad-free for good or is just waiting for the right moment. And after this week, nothing seems out of place.
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