ChatGPT has 1.2 billion weekly users, and OpenAI is still working out how to earn money from the ones who pay little or nothing. Its latest answer is display advertising, placed beside the pictures those users ask it to draw.
The company said on Monday that visual ads will begin appearing later this month alongside image generation results, TechCrunch reported. They will run in the United States only at first, with an initial test group of advertisers.
Only the ad-supported plans are affected, meaning the free tier and the low-cost Go subscription. Plus, Pro and Enterprise customers will not see them.
OpenAI says the ads sit next to the generated image, not inside it. They will be clearly labelled, and the company says they will not influence the answers ChatGPT gives.
This is the third step in under a year. OpenAI introduced ads to ChatGPT earlier in 2026 and extended them to India in August.
The more telling detail is the plumbing. Alongside the new format, OpenAI widened its list of measurement partners to include attribution firms such as AppsFlyer, Triple Whale and Adjust, and brought in DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to assess brand suitability. Those are the tools of a mature advertising business, built so that buyers can prove an ad led to a sale.
TechCrunch sets the move against Meta, an advertising company that has just launched its own chatbot, Muse.
What OpenAI has not supplied is a revenue figure, a timetable for other countries, or an account of what in a user’s request decides which ad appears. A promise that ads will not change the answer is not the same as a promise that the question will not choose the ad.
