One day after Anthropic's Super Bowl ad slammed OpenAI for adding ads to its chatbot, OpenAI powered ahead with its advertising plan.

On Monday, OpenAI announced it had begun testing ads in ChatGPT for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers in the US. The company justified its decision by saying it is a necessary measure to continue to deliver intelligence at high quality while keeping free and low-cost options.

“Keeping the Free and Go tiers fast and reliable requires significant infrastructure and ongoing investment,” said the company in the release. “Ads help fund that work, supporting broader access to AI through higher quality free and low cost options, and enabling us to keep improving the intelligence and capabilities we offer over time.”

The company also reassured users that the answers will be completely independent from the ads and the ads will not influence ChatGPT's answers. This reassurance is likely a response to Anthropic’s latest ad campaign shown during the Super Bowl, which portrayed a chatbots’ response quality and helpfulness being skewed by the ad inclusion.

The ads submitted by advertisers are matched to users based on the topic of the conversation, their past chats, and interactions with ads. However, OpenAI says the advertisers do not have access to the users' chats, chat history, memories, or personal details. All they will have access to is aggregate data of the ad’s performance.

OpenAI added that ads will not be shown if the user is under 18 or if the conversation relates to a sensitive topic such as health, mental health, or politics. Users retain some level of control by being able to dismiss ads, delete their ad data, share feedback, and more. If users wish to not see ads at all, they can upgrade their accounts to any of the paid tiers or opt out of ads in the Free tier for fewer daily free messages. In other words, you get additional free usage of ChatGPT if you view more ads.