The truly free ride for ChatGPT might soon come to a close as OpenAI could be nearing the introduction of ads. As first discovered by Tibor Blaho on X, a beta version of ChatGPT’s Android app includes lines of code that heavily reference ads. According to the post, the 1.2025.329 beta version includes mentions of “ads feature,” “search ad” and “bazaar content.” While this isn’t a version that’s available to the public yet, it could be an indication that OpenAI is ready to open the ad floodgates.
This discovery follows a report from The Information earlier this month that claimed that OpenAI was considering incorporating ads in ChatGPT based on memory or user chats. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has previously discussed how ads could get incorporated into ChatGPT, but has never offered a definitive stance. During an event at Harvard Business School last year, Altman said that combining ads and AI is “uniquely unsettling to me” and that it’s a “last resort for us as a business model,” but that he’s “not totally against them.”
Months later, Altman reiterated in the first episode of the OpenAI podcast that the company isn’t against embedding ads into the platform but hasn’t figured out the exact method. While the recently-discovered lines of code don’t reveal where ads would be included, OpenAI could be considering ads for the free tier that already offers limits on messages, memory and overall reasoning.