Although OpenAI continues to maintain that there are currently no ads or ad tests on ChatGPT, Mark Chen, the company’s chief research officer, acknowledged that the company has “fallen short” in recent promotional messages and is working on improving the experience.
Chen and other OpenAI executives were responding to posts from paid ChatGPT subscribers who complained about seeing promotional messages from companies like Peloton and Target.
In response, the company said it was simply testing ways to display apps built on the ChatGPT app platform it announced in October, and that there was “no financial component” to these proposals. (One of the users who originally complained about the ads responded with skepticism, writing, “Oh my gosh… don’t insult paying users.”)
Similarly, Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, posted on Friday that there is “a lot of confusion about advertising rumors on ChatGPT.”
“There is no live testing of ads. The screenshots you see are not real or are not ads,” Turley wrote. “We intend to take a thoughtful approach when pursuing advertising. People trust ChatGPT, and everything we do is designed to honor that.”
However, earlier the same day, Chen responded in a more apologetic tone, acknowledging that the controversy was not just a matter of user confusion.
“I agree that anything that feels like advertising needs to be treated with care, and we fell short of that,” he wrote. “We’ve turned off this kind of suggestion while we improve the accuracy of our model. We’re also looking at better controls so you can dial this down or turn it off if you don’t think it’s useful.”
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Earlier this year, former Instacart and Facebook executive Fidji Sumo joined OpenAI as applications CEO and was widely expected to build the company’s advertising business. However, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that a recent memo from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared a “code red,” prioritizing work to improve the quality of ChatGPT and rolling back other products, including advertising.
