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

While OpenAI continues to insist that there are currently no ads — or tests for advertising — live in ChatGPT, the company’s chief research officer Mark Chen also acknowledged that the company “fell short” with recent promotional messages and is working to improve the experience.

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

In response, the company said it was only testing ways to show apps built on the ChatGPT app platform that it announced in October, with “no financial component” to those suggestions. (One of the users who’d complained initially about the ads responded skeptically, writing, “Bruhhh… Don’t insult your paying users.”)

Similarly, ChatGPT head Nick Turley posted Friday that he was “seeing lots of confusion about ads rumors in ChatGPT.”

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

Earlier that same day, however, Chen responded in a more apologetic tone, acknowledging that the controversy isn’t just a matter of user confusion.

“I agree that anything that feels like an ad needs to be handled with care, and we fell short,” he wrote. “We’ve turned off this kind of suggestion while we improve the model’s precision. We’re also looking at better controls so you can dial this down or off if you don’t find it helpful.”

Earlier this year, former Instacart and Facebook executive Fidji Sumo joined OpenAI as CEO of Applications and was widely expected to build up 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 pushing back other products including advertising.