AI bids farewell to "pure technical competition"! OpenAI launches commercialization of advertising and engages in a battle of ideas with Anthropic.

The leading company in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), OpenAI, officially announced on Monday that it will begin testing advertising in its popular ChatGPT chat Siasun Robot & Automation. This move marks a new stage in the AI industry's transition from pure technical competition to deep commercial exploration, and has sparked a fierce public relations and ideological clash with its competitor, Anthropic. According to OpenAI's official statement, this advertising test will cover logged-in adult users using the free version and Go subscription plan. Users of higher-tier paid packages such as Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education editions will not see ads. OpenAI emphasizes that ads will be clearly labeled and visually separated from ChatGPT's responses, and will not affect the replies generated by Siasun Robot & Automation. The company stated that ads will be optimized based on the content most helpful to users, and the placement will be based on the current conversation topic, chat history, and past interactions with ads. Users will also have the option to opt out of personalized ads based on their personal interests. OpenAI promises that users' conversation content will be kept confidential from advertisers. "Our goal is to allow advertising to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT functionality for free, while maintaining users' trust in ChatGPT when handling important and personal tasks," OpenAI wrote on its website. The company also stated that it will establish protective measures to reduce the risk of fraud and other harmful or misleading ads. Earlier this year, OpenAI had indicated that it would soon begin testing ads within ChatGPT. CEO of OpenAI's Applied Business, Peggy Simpson, has been scouting candidates to lead commercial operations, including the introduction of advertising in ChatGPT. Simpson reportedly met with potential candidates last September, including several former colleagues at Meta, to build a new team to drive ChatGPT's advertising business. Anthropic's Leveraged Marketing Sparks Executive Aerial Warfare OpenAI's advertising test plan coincides with a carefully planned marketing campaign by rival Anthropic. Last Sunday, Anthropic aired a pair of TV commercials during the Super Bowl, humorously mocking the practice of inserting ads into AI conversations, suggesting that this would disrupt the user experience. Data from market measurement company EDO showed that the search volume and website visits generated by Anthropic's ads exceeded three ads previously released by OpenAI, indicating consumer interest in the topic. This prompted a strong counterattack from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. He posted a lengthy rebuttal on the social media platform X, calling Anthropic's advertising message "misleading," and emphasizing that OpenAI "will never adopt the approach described by Anthropic." Altman defended the company's decision, stating, "We believe everyone should have the right to use AI and are committed to providing free access." He positioned the introduction of advertising as a means to "subsidize access to AI technology for more people." It is understood that Anthropic outlined its stance on rejecting advertising in its official blog, believing that "including ads in Claude's conversation is incompatible with its positioning as 'a truly helpful assistant for work and deep thinking.'" The launch of this advertising test reveals OpenAI's efforts to balance universal access with sustainable commercialization. According to sources, OpenAI expects ad revenue to account for less than half of its total income in the long term. Currently, the digital advertising market is mainly dominated by Alphabet Inc. Class C and Meta, with Amazon.com, Inc. becoming an increasingly important player in recent years. At the same time, OpenAI is showing strong growth momentum. Altman revealed in an internal message to employees that ChatGPT has surpassed 800 million weekly active users, with a monthly growth rate "returning to over 10%." To cope with competition from Alphabet Inc. Class C and Anthropic, OpenAI announced a "red alert" status last December to focus resources on improving ChatGPT. In the fiercely competitive code generation field, OpenAI claims that its product, Codex, has a weekly growth rate of about 50%, directly competing for market share with Anthropic's Claude Code. The company also released a new GPT-5.3-Codex model last week and an independent app for Apple Inc. computers. While advancing its business, OpenAI's capital story continues. Altman and CFO Sarah Freil are reportedly outlining the company's growth prospects to investors in order to complete a round of financing that could amount to as much as $100 billion. This round of financing may be completed in two parts, with Microsoft Corporation, NVIDIA Corporation, and Amazon.com (reportedly negotiating investments of up to $50 billion) potentially participating in the first part, with investors such as SoftBank potentially joining later.