There's some pretty foreseeable stuff just considering the existing attention capitalism business model of big tech we all know and loathe. Eventually OpenAI is going to have to make money, and blending ads into answers will be an obvious way. Next step will be maximizing eyeball time on those ads by any means necessary, including all the engagement baiting techniques Meta and other social media companies have already pioneered.
“The "Enshittification" has arrived
I asked ChatGPT about the impact of the current tarrifs on inventories over the next few months. It returned a long list
of links to toiletries I might want to buy.
I asked it why it did that. It replied: "As of April 28, 2025, OpenAl introduced new shopping features to ChatGPT, enhancing its capabilities to provide product recommendations complete with images, reviews, and direct purchase links. These features are available to all users, including those on Free, Plus, and Pro tiers, and even to users not logged in. The recommendations are generated organically, without paid advertisements or commission- based incentives, relying instead on structured metadata from third-party sources such as pricing, product
descriptions, and reviews. This update aims to offer a more personalized and streamlined shopping experience directly within the ChatGPT interface, allowing users to explore products across various categories like fashion, beauty, electronics, and home goods. If you have any specific preferences or
need tailored recommendations, feel free to let me know!"
I'd say 40% of my conversations end with it suggesting I ask it to find products for me. For example I was trying to determine if I need to screw down stair nosing or if glue and nails were enough and it wanted to help me find screws
Oh yeah, it also did that for me recently when I asked how I would go about designing a PCB that takes M.2 daughterboards. It recommended stems and threads I should buy. Unfortunately all the product links were dead.
Just today I was asking about parsing names and determining gender and it kept pushing an external paid service called namsor. When I asked the same question about a month ago, there was no such mention. So yes, paid ads are here.
As long as we don't take anything these service spew out at face value, we can use them to our advantage. Human brains are being subject to evolutionary pressures at warp speed.
