Huzzah! A mass psychosis inducing machine is making money out the wazoo by bombarding users with highly-targeted corporate messages.
According to a new Axios scoop, OpenAI has already generated $100 million in annual recurring revenue from stuffing advertisements into ChatGPT in just two months, suggesting that its big bet on leveraging its users’ deeply personal conversations to offer hyper-effective commercials is paying off.
OpenAI told investors it expects to rake in $2.5 billion in ad revenue by the end of 2026, and a staggering $53 billion by 2029, per Axios. And by 2030, it predicted that figure will double to $100 billion, surpassing the revenue of giant companies like Tesla and Disney.
The projections are based on the assumption that OpenAI reaches 2.75 billion weekly users by 2030, we should note. As of February, that figure stands at 900 million.
The AI industry loves to throw around big numbers, so it’s worth taking these projections with a grain of salt, especially as OpenAI ingratiates itself to investors ahead of an anticipated multi-trillion dollar IPO. Nonetheless, $100 million is a handsome chunk of change for a pilot program that only began in February. If it turns out to be anywhere near as lucrative as OpenAI hopes, it could be the long-awaited answer to the nagging question hanging over the AI industry: how it expects to become profitable, as the vast majority of its users do not pay for its service.
The idea is sound: Google generates hundreds of billions in advertising revenue per year by collecting troves of user data that it uses to display vast numbers of ads to users. With more people turning to AI chatbots to get answers instead of search engines, ChatGPT ads could be even more effective by drawing on users’ extensive conversations, in which they will surely state their desires in plain or implicit terms.
It could come at a major cost, however. Ads have proved controversial with ChatGPT users, a paint point that its competitor Anthropic capitalized on in a series of Superbowl commercials emphasizing that its chatbot Claude would stay ad-free.
It’s true that some users see it as taking advantage of their trust. It threatens the technology’s image as an informed impartial tool, or as a close confidante or companion. OpenAI will have to walk a tight rope to avoid scaring off its core customers. Loyalties in this nascent but rapidly growing industry are fleeting: scores of ChatGPT users vowed to switch to Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, for instance, after Sam Altman agreed a deal with the Pentagon to deploy its tech across the military.
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