Google DeepMind CEO ‘amazed’ by OpenAI pushing forward with announcements in ChatGPT

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, said he was “amazed” that OpenAI had already moved to serve ads within its chatbot. In an interview with Axios in Davos, the AI ​​leader was responding to a question about using ads to monetize AI services, saying the idea was something the Google team was considering “very carefully.”

Hassabis also said his team didn’t feel pressure from the tech giant to make a “deliberate” decision about ads, despite how important ads are to Google’s core business.

The DeepMind co-founder’s comments follow news on Friday of the OpenAI startup Testing ads as a means of generating Additional revenue from a portion of the AI ​​chatbot’s 800 million weekly active users who don’t have a paid subscription.

While OpenAI may have had to consider advertising, considering rising infrastructure and energy costs, its decision could change how users view the service.

“I’m a little surprised that they moved so early toward this,” Hassabis said, referring to OpenAI’s adoption of ads. “I mean, look at the ads, there’s nothing wrong with ads… they fund a large portion of the consumer Internet. If they’re done well, they can be beneficial,” he explained.

“But in the world of assistants, and if you think of a chatbot as an assistant that’s supposed to be helpful — and ideally, in my opinion, as they become more powerful, the kind of technology that works for you as an individual… there’s a question of how does advertising fit into that model?… You want to trust your assistant, so how does that work?” question.

Echoing some early comments from another interview in Davos, Hassabis also said Google doesn’t have “any current plans” to do ads in its AI-powered chatbot. Instead, the company will monitor the situation to see how users respond.

Of course, we’ve already seen consumer backlash to the idea of ​​ads creeping into people’s conversations using AI assistants. When OpenAI last month began exploring a feature that suggests apps to try during users’ conversations, for example, people reacted negatively, saying such suggestions felt like intrusive ads. Shortly after, OpenAI pulled the plug on app suggestions, which it claimed were not actually ads because they “did not have any financial component.”

But whether or not money was exchanged was not what angered users. Rather, it was because the app’s suggestions degraded the quality of experience.

His statements indicate that this also worries Hassabis.

He explained that using a chatbot is a much different experience than using a Google search. Through search, Google already understands user intent, so it can show ads that may be useful. Chatbots, on the other hand, aim to become helpful digital assistants that know about you and can help you in many aspects of your life.

“I think that’s very different from the search use case. So I think that needs to be thought about very carefully,” he added.

Making Gemini more useful to each user is also the focus Newly launched customization features announced today for Google’s AI mode. Now, users can choose to enable Gemini’s AI to tap on their Gmail and photos for personalized responses in AI Search mode, similar to how the Gemini app just added a Personal Intelligence feature that can reference users’ Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube history.

Although personalized ad targeting is a business that powers the free web, pushing an ad at a user while they’re in a conversation with an AI assistant can feel off-putting. That’s why customers rejected Amazon’s previous attempts to integrate ads into its Alexa experience — they wanted an assistant, not a personal shopper selling them things to buy.

Hassabis said he didn’t feel top-down pressure to force ads on the AI ​​product either, though he acknowledged there might be a way to do that later.

“We don’t feel any immediate pressure to make knee-jerk decisions like that – I think that’s the history of what we’ve done at DeepMind – to be very scientific, rigorous, and thoughtful about every step we take – whether it’s the technology itself or the product.”