ChatGPT’s Coming Ads Will Be the Most Manipulative Shopping Tool in History

And OpenAI has every incentive to make them devastatingly effective

If you’ve been paying attention to the tech news recently, you’ll have seen the leaks: ChatGPT is preparing to introduce advertising. Code discovered in the Android beta mentions “search ads,” “ad carousel,” and something called “bazaar content.” OpenAI’s internal forecasts predict this will generate a staggering $25 billion by 2029.

But here’s what most commentary is missing: these won’t be ordinary ads. If OpenAI gets this right (and they have every reason to), ChatGPT ads will be the most effective and manipulative shopping advertisements ever created. Not because of better targeting algorithms or shinier creative, but because of something far more insidious: ChatGPT knows you better than you know yourself.

Let me explain why this should worry all of us.