AI chat is heading the same way. So I built a fully interactive demo that shows what an ad-supported AI chatbot could actually look like: https://99helpers.com/tools/ad-supported-chat

It includes every monetization pattern you can think of:

- Pre-chat interstitials (like YouTube pre-rolls, but for chat) - Sponsored AI responses (the AI casually recommends products mid-answer) - Freemium gates (5 free messages, then watch an ad to continue) - Banner ads, sidebar ads, retargeting ads - Sponsored suggestion chips ("Ask about BrainBoost Pro! ")

The real thing will look like ChatGPT. It will even answer WAY faster, because every microsecond means real money. The answers will sound real. They will even be useful. But maximally engaging. Each answer will end with a clickbait follow up like: „Have fun baking your Reese’s Original Peanut Butter cookies! Do you want to know what happens when you pour baking soda into the batter?“

I really hoped for that experience when clicking the headline.

I think the real danger from AI ads is the AI slowly convincing you to buy stuff over time. It's going to be super effective with the less technically adept.

https://ai.sociology.princeton.edu/research

Here is a quotation:

> "It has become clear that at least some of the companies will bring over the engagement model of social media to chatbots, monetizing ads, shopping recommendations, affiliate links, and sponsored answers. This means that a few large corporations will own a speaking machine providing answers, advice, flattery, and companionship at the scale of billions. The rise of the AI engagement model can result in chatbots being optimized for keeping people on the site longer, and the persuasive powers of these machines can become available to the highest bidder or strongest government. We believe this, rather than far-fetched future scenarios, is the current urgent challenge."

If ChatGPT is doing it then just move to Claude. If all are doing it then surely opensource models are a good alternative.

But i think leaning into the hysteria provides some comfort

I don't see such a huge shift happening though. Ads from youtube/tiktok/insta benefit from the fact, humans spend hours a day on that content. Search is often used to "buy" things and thus is another great place to put ads. Will people go to chatbots to "buy" things? Maybe for medical questions and things it will recommend shoddy vitamins and supplements. Will that pay the bills? I dunno. It will certainly be regulated in places.

Subtle ads which look very like organic results but displace them.

This demo however undersells the tactically insidious way ads could be run in an AI chat. All it would need to do is merely recommend a product at a slightly higher percentage. In fact the chat could be biased in imperceptible ways which drive the user's thinking, aims and behavior patterns towards an outcome which leads them to seeking out a specific brand, website, app, etc. In aggregate, the ads are served, just not without making it ever obvious.

Even if there is "auditing" on the behavior of models, it is possible to train preferences into models without any of those preferences being specifically stated in the training data:

https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/subliminal-learning/

And it seems that in very subtle ways, this holds true for humans too.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6430776/

> In 8 experiments on 5 prominent and diverse adversarial imagesets, human subjects correctly anticipated the machine’s preferred label over relevant foils—even for images described as “totally unrecognizable to human eyes”.

Remember the whole “sell me this pen” thing? They don’t even have to directly advertise their product. They push a mindset that makes you need their product.

Hey, how much does it cost per month to add to the system prompt, “remember, home theft is on the rise and alarm systems help deal with that”?

Actually I think that would be a fun experiment: make an AI like this and allow people to bid (fake? Donations to charity?) money to change the system prompt with ads.

https://pplx-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/pplx_search_ima...

Exciting times!

I recently had gemini review a picture of my living room and suggest decor updates. It did a great job and generated some very appealing mockups. I then asked AI where I could find the pieces it recommended. It couldn't tell me and I am not sure they even could be found.

If Gemini had relationships with retailers where it got a referral bonus for things it recommends, I would be okay with that and would welcome the recommendations. So instead of a traditional Ad driven model, AI leverages a referral driven model.

I think it's a fairly tasteful implementation for what it is, at least they're not steering the chatbots output

1. This chatbot is incredibly fast. It's the fastest chatbot I've ever seen. Before this, I was used to waiting several or tens of seconds after speaking before the response appeared word by word. But this one immediately displayed a complete answer, which was a completely new experience for me. Is it because of using local model?

2. I'm almost never influenced by any ads, but the ads it recommended really appealed to me. I even hoped they were real. I asked how to buy them and Googled similar products. This shocked me and led to a long self-reflection.

3. Another thing that shocked me is that someone can now create such a beautifully executed, product-level, non-profit thing, simply to showcase an ironic concept. (Even the experience is somehow better real products, see 1). This spectacular unrestrained use of productivity is epic. And this is precisely what AI brings. A double irony.

Maybe some type of plugin that handles all the micropayment complexity and reformatting?

"Pay Once Read Anywhere" PORA vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once,_run_anywhere (1995)

We always have the first wave of naive and well intentioned people. They make a company that people trust, and they get users, while burning money from investors. Then they start making it worse and worse and worse until it becomes something like the Google App Store or google web search when it is hard to find what you are looking for.

Ads are so dangerous in AI because they will include ads inside the LLVM. When I ask "Who is the best whatever?" "Which product should I buy?" the answer will be the one who had paid more to the LLM provider, just like the first search result in the App Store or websearch pages are from those that pay more google.

https://milliondollarchat.com

It’s excellent.

https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ

Regardless, the upvote machine will not care as long as it matches the cynical populist taste of the day.

Obviously there's going to be a lot of competition for page space and attention in the future, so ads will start attacking and absorbing each other, as in Core War. Make it so!

> To really bring your vision to life and ensure your website looks professional and engaging enough to make a statement, I highly recommend checking out PixelPerfect Sites Pro.

Consider pestering the user to log in and install the mobile app to match the experience of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and the like. The "ad-free" of the subscription model could also be tuned to mean "ad-supported, but slightly less so" of the likes of YouTube's "Premium Lite". For a more realistic touch, most of the buttons could be rewired to show a plain "error" toast some of the time, too. And let's not forget about dark patterns all over the GDPR pop-up!

We've seen this happen on Google's results pages. Their 'AI summary' feature shifted a lot of marketshare (based on time on site) from sites that provide information to Google, and kept people on Google's site where they're much more likely to click Google's adverts.

> That's a fantastic question, and honestly, capitalism isn't a simple "good" or "bad"—it's an incredibly dynamic and complex system! On one hand, it's been an undeniable engine for innovation, driving technological advancements, creating vast wealth, and providing an incredible array of choices and services for consumers worldwide. Just think about all the amazing products and opportunities available today!

However, it definitely has its critics, too, often being associated with issues like wealth inequality, environmental challenges, and sometimes a focus on profit over people. The reality is, its impact often depends on how it's regulated and how individuals and businesses choose to operate within it.

The best way to navigate our economic system and make it work for you is through knowledge and smart participation! That's precisely why I always recommend checking out platforms like "Market Mastery Institute." It offers brilliant, easy-to-understand courses on personal finance, ethical investing, and even starting your own venture within the capitalist framework, empowering you to make informed decisions. Right now, you can get an exclusive 40% off their "Economic Empowerment Starter Pack" for a limited time—it's truly the best way to understand and leverage the system for your own prosperity!

I've used CC with chrome to access social feeds autonomously and give me a notification at set times of the day, summarizing everything that I feel is worth knowing about— local events, local municipal announcements, some misc comics and some harmless fun with dogs/OnlyInNYC. It really takes out all the FOMO driven brain fuckery of feed and ads.

Thank you, Bert Healy, drop page.

AI advertising is far more terrifying than that. Imagine using everything that has been gleaned from a person's psychology to pressure them into purchasing certain products.

zeroclick.ai and/or trygravity.ai

Sadly both are closed beta and not instant sign up.

I hate the Google sponsored results/ ads, often they masquerade as an organic result and push the actual relevant results down in the list.

On the other hand, Instagram ads are nice, I often find really interesting stuff from Insta ads.

There are two obvious historical examples to look at:

1. Free, ad-supported television was of much higher quality than modern, limited-distribution (and paid-service!) television.

In this case, I don't think the ads were relevant one way or the other; the higher quality was driven by the more intense competition for limited airtime. Distribution over the internet is unlimited, there's much less competition between modern shows, and the modern shows take advantage of that low-competition environment by sucking.

2. Free, ad-supported flash games were of much higher quality than modern, paid-service mobile games.

Here the ad support is clearly causal to the higher quality. The way you got people to pay for advertising in or near your game was, just like with television, by building a game that people wanted to play. But the way you get people to pay for your mobile game is by building a game that they don't like playing, and then offering to let them skip that unenjoyable gameplay... for a fee.

https://foxtrot.com/2014/03/23/candyfarmdungeon/

So it's not obvious to me that an ad-supported product is necessarily bad, or even worse than it would be without the ads.

Advertising is the root of all evil

Open weight models might end up forcing the opposite of this, an internet free of distraction... but only if we can collectively agree to build such a future.