Confusion leaves AI ad strategy amid trust concerns

AI company Perplexity is backing away from advertising over concerns it will erode user trust, despite moves by competitors to introduce ads as an alternative monetization strategy.

Perplexity was one of the first AI services to accept ads in 2024, after conducting tests where sponsored responses appeared below the chatbot’s responses. But that approach was scrapped last year, and company executives now say they have no plans to revisit it. Financial Times.

“The user has to believe it’s the best possible answer in order to continue using the product and be willing to pay for it,” a Perplexity executive told the publication.

The report follows OpenAI’s move earlier this month to serve ads to ChatGPT users who have a free account or a low-cost Go subscription. OpenAI said the ads will not influence the responses ChatGPT provides or provide content from ChatGPT conversations to advertisers.

Antropic, the creators of Claude, recently mocked OpenAI for its decision to serve ads to users and said it has no plans to do the same. The company says that including ads in Claude would be inconsistent with its mission to create a useful assistant for work and deep thinking, and that users shouldn’t have to guess whether the AI ​​is useful or “subtly steer the conversation toward something monetizable.”

Google offers advertising in AI mode and in its AI report summaries for traditional search results. However, Google has not yet introduced ads to its Gemini chatbot.

Advertising strategies are one way AI companies have looked to generate revenue from users and appease investors while spending significant resources to train and operate large language models. Meanwhile, the cost of training and running large language models continues to rise, with no profit to be seen.