ChatGPT has ads now. You mentioned recipes. Here's a meal kit.

You mention you're looking for a good pasta recipe. ChatGPT gives you one. And right below the answer, there's a sponsored ad for a meal kit service. That's OpenAI's own example of how their new ad system works — targeted to the topic of your conversation and your chat history.

The pitch is: the ads don't affect the answers, advertisers can't see your chats, everything is clearly labeled, you can opt out in exchange for fewer free messages, or just pay for Plus and skip it entirely. OpenAI says ad matching is based on what you're asking about, not handed to advertisers as raw data.

The thing people loved about ChatGPT was that it wasn't this. Now it's this.