OpenAI says it’s turning off app suggestions that look like ads

While OpenAI continues to insist that there are no ads – or ad tests – live in ChatGPT currently, the company’s chief research officer Mark Chen also admitted that the company has “missed” recent promotional messages and is working to improve the experience.

Chen and other OpenAI executives were responding to posts by paying ChatGPT subscribers who complained about seeing promotional messages for companies like Peloton and Target.

In response, the company said it was only testing ways to showcase apps built on the ChatGPT app platform it announced in October, without “any financial component” to those proposals. (One user who initially complained about the ads responded skeptically, writing: “Bruhhh… don’t insult your paying users.”)

Likewise, ChatGPT’s president, Nick Turley, posted on Friday that he is “seeing a lot of confusion around the ChatGPT ad rumors.”

“There are no live tests of the ads, any screenshots I’ve seen are either not real or aren’t ads,” Turley wrote. “If we pursue advertising, we will take a thoughtful approach. People trust ChatGPT and anything we do will be designed to respect that.”

However, earlier the same day, Chen responded in a more apologetic tone, acknowledging that the controversy was not simply a matter of user confusion.

“I agree that anything that looks like an advertisement should be treated with care, and we have failed to do so,” he wrote. “We’ve turned off this type of suggestion while we work to improve the accuracy of the model. We’re also looking at better controls so you can turn this off or on if you don’t find it helpful.”

Earlier this year, Fidji Sumo, the former Instacart and Facebook executive, joined OpenAI as chief applications officer 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 on improving the quality of ChatGPT and pushing other products including advertising.