ChatGPT Allows You to Opt Out of Ads, but It May Not Be Worth It.
It’s finally happened. After months of speculation , ChatGPT has officially launched advertising. OpenAI announced the news on Monday , announcing that ads would be launched in a test mode for registered adult users with both free and paid subscriptions. If you or your organization pays for ChatGPT, for example, with a Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, or Education account, you won’t see ads alongside the bot.
OpenAI claims that ads don’t influence the responses ChatGPT generates, and that these messages are always clearly separated from the actual ChatGPT responses. Furthermore, the ads are marked as “Sponsored.” However, this isn’t exactly a church-and-state situation. OpenAI says it decides which ads to show you based on your current and past chats, as well as your past interactions with ChatGPT ads. If you ask for help with a dinner recipe, you might see an ad for a grocery shopping cart or grocery delivery service.
The company claims to protect your chats from advertisers. The company says this idea is based solely on funding so OpenAI can expand ChatGPT to more users. This is reportedly why advertising is being launched in a test mode rather than as a hard-coded feature: OpenAI says it wants to “learn, listen, and ensure it delivers the right user experience.” Therefore, advertisers don’t have access to your chats, chat history, memories, or your personal data. However, they do have access to aggregated information about ad performance, including views and clicks.
OpenAI only displays ads to adults. If the service detects that you are under 18 , it will block ads from appearing in your chats. Ads will also not appear if you engage with ChatGPT on topics related to health, medicine, or politics. You can leave feedback about ads you’ve seen, which may impact future ad serving. You can also delete your ad data and manage ad personalization if you want to reset the information OpenAI uses to display ads to you.
How to opt out of ChatGPT ads
The thing is, you don’t actually have to deal with ads, even if you use ChatGPT for free. It’s not just upgrading to a paid ChatGPT plan, though OpenAI does offer that option in its announcement. Furthermore, OpenAI offers a special opt-out option for Free and Go users. Of course, there’s a significant catch: you have to agree to a reduced number of free messages per day in ChatGPT. OpenAI doesn’t provide specific details, so it’s unclear how limited the ad-free experience will be. But if you hate ads or simply don’t want to see ads for anything unrelated to your ChatGPT conversations, it’s possible.
If you’re happy with this compromise, here’s how to disable ads. Open ChatGPT, then go to your profile to access the Settings page. Scroll down to the “Ad Management” section, then select “Change plan to opt out of ads.” Select “Reduce message limit,” and ChatGPT will confirm that ads have been disabled for your account. You can return to this page at any time to re-enable ads and restore your message limit.
Note: In April 2025, Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyright in the training and operation of its artificial intelligence systems.