- ChatGPT announces the arrival of advertisements in its free tier
- An $8 per month ChatGPT Go is also coming, but it will still contain ads
- Unsubscribing may require paying at least $20 per month
ChatGPT will soon have ads, at least on its free tier, and the news comes straight from OpenAI. The ads aren’t present in the chatbot yet, but you can expect to see them “in the coming weeks.”
OpenAI finally confirmed the rumor in a detailed blog post on Friday (January 16, 2026) that outlines not only its advertising plans, but also its principles on how and why they will display them: “Our mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all humanity. »
The AI giant simultaneously announced the global availability of ChatGPT Go, a more affordable entry level at $8 per month, which unfortunately won’t be your first option for avoiding advertising when it arrives.
Adding advertising to ChatGPT is a no-brainer for OpenAI. The company has not yet reached profitability; its operating costs would be astronomical and its revenue potential is significant with 800 million monthly active users.
Addressing even a fraction of these users could generate billions in revenue. In-app advertising could also put ChatGPT on equal footing with its main competitor, Google Gemini. Gemini AI previews are already part of Google search results, which are full of ads.
What will the ads look like?
OpenAI says ads will appear at the bottom of prompt results, as shown in the example above. So you can at least read your answer before you have to read an ad for Squarespace.
The ads will be context-based, meaning they will be related to the content of your ChatGPT conversation. Ask ChatGPT about the best laptop to buy and you might see an ad from Dell or Lenovo at the bottom.
Will these ads be different?
OpenAI plans to allow advertisers to take advantage of the platform, allowing consumers to ask advertisers questions about products or purchasing decisions in the same way they could interact with ChatGPT.
“AI tools level the playing field even further, allowing everyone to create high-quality experiences that help people discover options they might never have found otherwise,” OpenAI writes in the post.
All of these ads and ad experiences will be clearly labeled, according to OpenAI.
Who won’t see ads?
Anyone who the system knows is under 18, or someone who tells ChatGPT that they are under that age, will not see any ads. OpenAI will also keep ads away from health and politics-related discussion topics.
Advertisements will also not influence the information contained in your quick replies, meaning that no response should be considered that could benefit, highlight or criticize a potential advertiser.
Controls and unsubscription
OpenAI promises not to sell customer data to third parties and will allow you to opt out of personalization and erase your data, which could impact the relevance of the ads you see in ChatGPT.
An obvious way to avoid seeing the ads, however, is to join a paid tier that doesn’t include the new $8 per month ChatGPT Go plan. Although Go gives you more access to the latest OpenAI model and improved image generation, you need to get the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus plan to avoid ads.
However, OpenAI says, “We will still offer a way to opt out of ads in ChatGPT, including a paid, ad-free tier,” which suggests there could be other alternatives to turning off ads, although it’s not yet clear what those are.
Advertising testing in the free and ChatGPT Go tiers will begin soon in the United States. It’s unclear when they will spread to other users, although we suspect it will depend on their success in the United States.
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