I know Anthropic made these ads about not having ads but Apple also made ads about thinking different, yet once they became successful they ended up thinking the same as every other business.
Are you (and the other’s going all Pikachu face here) really that naive? Have you looked around lately? News is a race to the bottom for clicks and ad revenue, photo sharing sites are turning people into extremists because it results in more ad revenue than just showing your friend’s holiday photos, and search engines prefer giving malware laden installers over the legit version of open source software.
So yeah, the assumption unless shown otherwise is that things will get worse, and the user is just there to be sold whatever shit is paying most.
I mean your argument is basically saying "in the future Linux will have ads, there's a race to the bottom with operating systems, just look at windows". Tough to justify this train of thought with open weight models
That stands today. In the future the SOTA might move to where models of today are no longer competitive and there no open-weight alternatives available anymore. Let’s hope it’s not the case.
This is simply not (always) true. Spotify injects ads for Podcasts even for paying users. YouTube has tons of videos with adds built-in by content creators.
Yep, and a lot of the streaming services listed also inject ads for their own shows into the "ad-free" tier's content (before it begins). Plus ads on the home-page.
I dunno, I think it's clearly different if Spotify is using their platform to inject the ads vs the creators creating the content with ads included.
Like if Netflix let showrunners inject ads into their shows and provided a technical platform for that, and the Stranger Things creators added ads to every episode... nobody would be like "it's not Netflix showing ads, it's the Stranger Things creators".
Don't underestimate just how much money you can make off funneling visitors to ads at scale. It's basically Google's entire business model.
If OpenAI plays their cards right, they can definitely end up in a similar position. Yeah a lot of programmers would probably pony up for Claude, but every lazy high schooler in the world would gladly hear about Raid: Shadow Legends to have ChatGPT do their homework for them.
Don't get me wrong it's definitely sucks, but man is it ever a profitable way to suck.
This assumes that ads at google's or facebook's level would get them anywhere close to profitability. OpenAI's costs of doing business are only accelerating, all while burn rate continues to get worse. I have no doubt that selling ads will bring in a lot of revenue, but it'll be dwarfed by the numbers OpenAI needs to stop hemorrhaging cash every quarter. The great irony is that the more success OpenAI has in gaining users, the more money they lose at an ever-increasing rate. Lose on every sale, and make up for it in volume!
I'm "excited" for the era of different locally run LLMs get to have ads baked into them... People start selling ad-space to inject into their training/tuning data. Could be quite lucrative.
The competitor also having ads.
I know Anthropic made these ads about not having ads but Apple also made ads about thinking different, yet once they became successful they ended up thinking the same as every other business.
And once upon a time, Google did not do evil.
just go to openrouter and there are openweight models hosted by independent providers. why would all of them choose ads?
Then OpenRouter has ads, and the models hosted by third-parties have an ad/ad-free tier (heck, even ads injected into the query response stream).
this is motivated reasoning. the models are openweight and anyone can host them. why would every hosting company use ads? lets be a bit sensible.
Are you (and the other’s going all Pikachu face here) really that naive? Have you looked around lately? News is a race to the bottom for clicks and ad revenue, photo sharing sites are turning people into extremists because it results in more ad revenue than just showing your friend’s holiday photos, and search engines prefer giving malware laden installers over the legit version of open source software.
So yeah, the assumption unless shown otherwise is that things will get worse, and the user is just there to be sold whatever shit is paying most.
I mean your argument is basically saying "in the future Linux will have ads, there's a race to the bottom with operating systems, just look at windows". Tough to justify this train of thought with open weight models
It almost did. Look at Ubuntu and Amazon.
That stands today. In the future the SOTA might move to where models of today are no longer competitive and there no open-weight alternatives available anymore. Let’s hope it’s not the case.
even if that were to happen, its still a better situation than now.
We've seen this process before. If you don't pay, you are the product.
But people ARE paying and still getting ads in this move.
Their Go plan, which is paid, is getting ads.
There exists no (or very few) subscription service that has no tier without advertisements. You are panicking for no reason.
Netflix?
Hulu?
Youtube?
Spotify?
Adobe?
Duolingo?
X?
Then everything is ok since everyone's doing it!
you didn't get my point - no one is doing it and there's a reason why.,
This is simply not (always) true. Spotify injects ads for Podcasts even for paying users. YouTube has tons of videos with adds built-in by content creators.
Yep, and a lot of the streaming services listed also inject ads for their own shows into the "ad-free" tier's content (before it begins). Plus ads on the home-page.
this is an incorrect analogy - the platform is not showing ads but rather the creators themselves.
I dunno, I think it's clearly different if Spotify is using their platform to inject the ads vs the creators creating the content with ads included.
Like if Netflix let showrunners inject ads into their shows and provided a technical platform for that, and the Stranger Things creators added ads to every episode... nobody would be like "it's not Netflix showing ads, it's the Stranger Things creators".
Once one competitor sees the ratchet turn they will follow suit.
Yeah, once competitors investors see OpenAI making a profit, and competitors not, they ask why.
> OpenAI making a profit
I don't think anyone has to worry about that.
Don't underestimate just how much money you can make off funneling visitors to ads at scale. It's basically Google's entire business model.
If OpenAI plays their cards right, they can definitely end up in a similar position. Yeah a lot of programmers would probably pony up for Claude, but every lazy high schooler in the world would gladly hear about Raid: Shadow Legends to have ChatGPT do their homework for them.
Don't get me wrong it's definitely sucks, but man is it ever a profitable way to suck.
This assumes that ads at google's or facebook's level would get them anywhere close to profitability. OpenAI's costs of doing business are only accelerating, all while burn rate continues to get worse. I have no doubt that selling ads will bring in a lot of revenue, but it'll be dwarfed by the numbers OpenAI needs to stop hemorrhaging cash every quarter. The great irony is that the more success OpenAI has in gaining users, the more money they lose at an ever-increasing rate. Lose on every sale, and make up for it in volume!
this won't work because there are way too many open weight alternatives that are run independently - just go to openrouter.
Competitors use ads?
I'm "excited" for the era of different locally run LLMs get to have ads baked into them... People start selling ad-space to inject into their training/tuning data. Could be quite lucrative.
Not yet. But they likely will, if OpenAI's ad revenue becomes worthwhile.
Or they view it as a differentiator and focus on a different segment. As I understand it, this is what Anthropic is doing:
1. Focus on businesses and developers
2. Make money on productivity and API platform
Enterprises are particularly sensitive about their data being farmed (e.g. note that paid Google accounts don’t have their emails used for ads.)
Keeping that trust is not a differentiator and existentially important to Anthropic.
I just don't believe that is likely.
I think that, despite Anthropic's present statements, they will move to ads if ads prove successful for ChatGPT or Gemini.
It would be viewed as "leaving money on the table" by their board and shareholders if they didn't.
this is false and not how things work at the enterprise level. trust is important and it is not lost by showing ads in free tier.
trust is lost in other ways.
no they don't
They will or they will perform worse. OpenAI will be able to offer a better `free tier` as it won't be free after all.
Not yet, but they all will. OpenAI has shown that customers will accept it.
name a single product that has
1. many competitors
2. ways to pay for the subscription but no tier exists to remove ads
i can't even think of one.
Ever heard of a thing called television?