> Product results are chosen independently and are not ads.
Correction: they're not their ads, but they're generating recommendations based on scraped web content which will inevitably be polluted with affiliate spam, astroturfing and other black hat marketing bullshit. They've actually found a way to run ads and not even get paid for it.
Case in point, I just asked ChatGPT for the best noise cancelling headphones under $200 (their example from the OP) and it cited multiple blatantly LLM generated affiliate blogspam sites. Doesn't really inspire confidence.
They could, but not necessarily. I think what OpenAI is getting is cooperation - that is, their search engine isn’t blocked. No money needs to change hands.
My guess is that once they're entrenched firmly enough, OpenAI will ask for money. First sell the free thing then once people rely on it enough, start charging.
Correction: they're not their ads, but they're generating recommendations based on scraped web content which will inevitably be polluted with affiliate spam, astroturfing and other black hat marketing bullshit. They've actually found a way to run ads and not even get paid for it.
Case in point, I just asked ChatGPT for the best noise cancelling headphones under $200 (their example from the OP) and it cited multiple blatantly LLM generated affiliate blogspam sites. Doesn't really inspire confidence.