Ad pause in ChatGPT: US Senate questions OpenAI's integrity

OpenAI is set to begin testing advertising in the free version of ChatGPT within the coming weeks — "sponsored" offers for products and services will appear at the bottom of the chat window. In response, US Senator Ed Markey (Democrat, Massachusetts) sent letters to the heads of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, and xAI's Elon Musk, demanding an explanation of how advertising in AI chatbots will affect consumer protection, privacy, and the safety of minor users.

What's changing in ChatGPT

According to The Verge, OpenAI will begin testing advertising for free ChatGPT users within the coming weeks. The format involves "sponsored" products and services placed at the bottom of a conversation with the chatbot. The company claims the ads will be relevant to the context of a specific conversation, but will not use users' personal data to train models or for targeting.

For OpenAI, this is effectively a first step toward the classic internet advertising model: free users, who number in the hundreds of millions, are costly for the company, and keeping models like GPT-4o running requires enormous computing power. The line between a "contextual suggestion" and "paid promotion" is blurred here: if the bot notices a user asking about sneakers and immediately shows a link to a specific brand, that is already using the context of the conversation for advertising purposes.

Why Senator Markey is alarmed

In letters addressed to the companies' CEOs, Markey writes that introducing advertising into AI chatbots "raises serious concerns about consumer protection, privacy, and the safety of young users" (quote from the document published on markey.senate.gov). The senator's reasoning: teenagers tend to trust AI models more than ordinary search engines, meaning hidden commercial influence could distort their perception of information. The concern is that models will start optimizing not for the accuracy of the answer, but for the probability of a click on a sponsored link — meaning the algorithm would quietly nudge the user toward a purchase disguised as "smart advice," without giving the same explicit signals that a classic search results page provides with an "ad" label.

Who else received letters from the senator

Markey's inquiry was not limited to OpenAI alone — similar letters demanding explanations were sent to Anthropic, Google, Meta*, Microsoft, Snap, and xAI. Formally, the senator wants to know whether these companies plan to introduce advertising into their own AI chatbots and what consumer and minor-protection measures they have in place. The fact that seven of the industry's biggest players made the list at once — from assistant developers (Anthropic, xAI) to owners of messengers and social networks (Meta, Snap) — shows that Washington views the problem of advertising in AI not as an OpenAI-specific case, but as a systemic risk for the entire industry.

Why the timing is risky for OpenAI

Introducing advertising is a forced move for OpenAI: keeping the free version of ChatGPT running for hundreds of millions of users has become a serious financial burden, and monetization through the Plus subscription alone doesn't cover it. But the timing looks unfortunate — questions about AI safety and ethics are already on regulators' agendas, and the attempt to turn a chatbot into an advertising platform adds more grounds for scrutiny. Essentially, the industry is now defining a fork in the road for itself: either move toward a transparent monetization model with clear rules for displaying ads, or risk digital assistants working not only in the interests of the user, but also in the interests of the advertiser.

When will advertising appear in ChatGPT?

OpenAI will begin testing advertising for free ChatGPT users within the coming weeks. It will be displayed as "sponsored" offers for products and services at the bottom of the chat window and, according to the company, will be relevant to the context of a specific conversation.

Which companies received letters from Senator Markey?

Senator Ed Markey sent letters demanding explanations to seven companies: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta*, Microsoft, Snap, and xAI. He wants to know whether they plan to introduce advertising into their AI chatbots and how this will affect consumer protection and the safety of minors.

Will OpenAI use users' personal data to show advertising?

According to OpenAI — no: the company states it will not use users' personal data either to train models or to target advertising, although the ads themselves will be selected based on relevance to the context of the current conversation.

*Meta has been designated an extremist organization and is banned in Russia.