[pgt]

OpenAI is in a pickle because they either have to make ads clearly delineated, which makes them easy to filter out by a simple proxy model, or they need to hide ads in the response (ala product placement), which reduces trust in the model and forces customers into a buying position.

Anthropic hit the jugular with their "no ads" ad, and sama fell for it hook, line & sinker.

If OpenAI needs ads to survive, it means they can't service debt on the VC horizon and will suffer against frontier model providers that can survive without ads.

[cabernal]

Can any provider survive without ads? These AI firms are propped up by VC money, they need to create profits at some point and ads is the most surefire way to do this

[TacticalCoder]

> Can any provider survive without ads? These AI firms are propped up by VC money ...

Google's Gemini is SOTA and Google is valued at 4 trillion. Now it's ironic of course: Google became a 4 trillion thanks to ads. Which now allows Google to serve no ads in Gemini. It doesn't matter to Google that they're operating at a loss with Gemini: they can throw hundreds of billions at the problem over a few years, serving zero ads, while people make fun of the AI firms showing ads, like ChadGPT.

OpenAI is not just facing Anthropic and its "no ads" ad, it's also facing "we're a 4 trillion company and can run Gemini at a loss for decades" Google, "we pretend we'll put datacenters in space so that xAI can tap into the SpaceX warchest", openweight models which anybody can run on rented hardware for next to nothing compared to ChadGPT's price, etc.

It doesn't matter if others can survive without ads: all that matters is that they can survive long enough without ads so that OpenAI doesn't become another trillion dollar company.

[unleaded]

asking £200/month for the high tiers isn't enough?

[pgt]

Yes, xAI & Anthropic.

Electricity generation is the constraining factor, but the sun does not turn off in space. xAI data centers in space drives cost to zero, even with inferior models.

I see no other future than SpaceXai winning.

[mirekrusin]

Kind of ironic as claude code keeps showing this "get $50 bucks for referral" when coding on $200/mo plan, so fucking annoying. Hypocrites.

[loremip]

IMO an optional referral bonus is less invasive than inline ads that could potentially change the quality of my response.

[nunez]

Product placement has long been accepted in movies TV and music. I'm going to guess that it will be more or less "fine" if it's in responses (I.e. people will grumble but still use it because its too useful).

[chihuahua]

The elegant solution is to rent space in the system prompt to advertisers. $X per character per hour, up to 1000 characters.