OpenAI has outlined a formal approach to advertising as part of its broader plan to expand access to ChatGPT and related AI products. The company states that advertising is being explored as a way to fund wider availability while keeping core AI systems aligned with user trust and safety expectations. Ads, if introduced, would not influence model responses and would be clearly separated from the conversational output generated by the system.
The company emphasizes that user conversations will not be sold to advertisers and that ads will not be personalized using sensitive conversation data. Any advertising shown would rely on limited contextual signals such as high-level session information rather than chat content itself. OpenAI positions this as a guardrail to prevent incentives that could distort model behavior or ranking of responses.
In the coming weeks, we plan to start testing ads in ChatGPT free and Go tiers.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 16, 2026
We’re sharing our principles early on how we’ll approach ads–guided by putting user trust and transparency first as we work to make AI accessible to everyone.
What matters most:
- Responses in… pic.twitter.com/3UQJsdriYR
The move is framed as a response to growing infrastructure costs and rising global demand for AI tools across education, work, and consumer use cases. By adding an advertising-supported option, OpenAI aims to keep a free tier available while continuing to offer paid plans for users and organizations that want higher limits, advanced capabilities, or enterprise controls.
OpenAI describes this direction as incremental and cautious, with advertising treated as a supporting revenue stream rather than a core driver of product design. The company reiterates that its primary objective remains long-term deployment of AI systems that are useful, safe, and accessible at scale, while maintaining a clear separation between commercial interests and model behavior.
