What's this about?
OpenAI expanded its ChatGPT ads experiment to the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea. Ads appear only for logged-in adults on the free "Free" and low-cost "Go" tiers; paid tiers stay ad-free, and free users can opt out in exchange for fewer daily messages. Ads are matched to your conversation topic and past chats, and labeled "sponsored." The same day, OpenAI released a ChatGPT desktop app for Linux in preview.
What exactly are "ads in ChatGPT"?
Until now ChatGPT made money from subscriptions. "Ads in ChatGPT" means sponsored suggestions inserted into the chat — e.g. ask about recipes and you might see a labeled ad for a meal-kit service below the answer. OpenAI insists the ads don't change the actual answer and that advertisers don't see your conversations. It's the same business model that turned search engines and social feeds into ad businesses, now arriving in a chatbot.
What's the community saying?
- "The enshittification clock started": many see ads as the inevitable slide toward search-engine economics, worried the free tier will subtly steer users.
- Trust vs. access: supporters accept ads as the price of keeping a powerful free tier alive for hundreds of millions of users.
- Linux app relief: developers cheered the Linux desktop app as long-overdue, since Linux is where much real coding happens.