Nine To Noon How will advertising in ChatGPT affect users?
Feb 3, 2026
Raffaella Cerriello, Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems specializing in platform economics and AI impacts. She explains why AI firms chase ad revenue, how chatbots collect deeper personal data, and why conversational ads could be more persuasive and risky. She also discusses challenges in keeping ads separate, threats to trust, and regulatory options to protect users.
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Advertising As A Needed Revenue Model
- AI firms face huge losses and need sustainable revenue beyond speculative use cases.
- Targeted advertising is the logical commercial path because it monetizes large user bases effectively.
Users Become The Product
- Turning users into data points for targeted ads shifts platform incentives away from the public good.
- This shift correlates with social harms like polarization and mental-health impacts observed on social media.
Chatbots Know More Than Social Media
- Chatbots hold far richer, more sensitive user data than social media because users upload private health and financial information.
- That depth makes ads shown in chatbots potentially much more persuasive and dangerous.