It seems those ChatGPT “apps” the company announced back in October are finally turning up for regular folk inside the large language model, and they look suspiciously like ads. This one, which prompts some users (most of them American) — even those paying for a ChatGPT ‘Plus’ subscription — to “Connect Target” alongside the store’s logo, was shared by former xAI employee Benjamin de Kraker in a post on X.
“There are no live tests for ads”
After social media loudly pointed out that the integration looked a whole lot like in-app advertising, OpenAI’s head of data, Daniel McAuley, confirmed in a post on X that these were actually apps, noting that the company is “still working on it.” Whatever ChatGPT calls them, they sure look a whole lot like ads to us.
ChatGPT head Nick Turley took a different approach. In response to de Kraker’s post, he completely denied the existence of ads inside ChatGPT. “There are no live tests for ads – any screenshots you’ve seen are either not real or not ads.” Stubbornly calling them ‘apps’ won’t make them any less invasive, though, will it, Nick?
While South Africans will likely dodge prompts to “Connect Target”, it won’t be long before the likes of Spotify or Canva begin hounding you to allow them access to your conversations with the AI chatbot.
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Or perhaps not, if we’re lucky. OpenAI quickly admitted that it missed the mark here and that the company was working on improving how apps present themselves to users. The company’s chief research officer even mentioned that it was working on ways to turn the feature down, or better yet, off entirely.
“We’ve turned off this kind of suggestion while we improve the model’s precision,” Chen wrote on X. “We’re also looking at better controls so you can dial this down or off if you don’t find it helpful.”
Even if these technically aren’t ads, it doesn’t mean that at least some ChatGPT users won’t be bothered by advertising at some stage. In November, several mentions of ads were discovered in code for the Android app (via Engadget). Something’s gotta fund the company when the investors figure out they’ve been scammed, right?
