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A look at the small print for ads inside ChatGPT

OpenAI is gradually rolling out ads to ChatGPT.

The news of ads being displayed inside its AI product emerged in November last year. The pilot started with logged-in US users in January 2026 on the Free and Go plans for ChatGPT. And more recently in May, the company announced that it would be expanding the pilot to users in the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea.

But I decided to take a look at the small print to see how OpenAI is looking to make this lawful under the GDPR and what it means for users and AI products in the EU more broadly.

This is important because the terms of the bargain are being set quietly, in privacy policies most people never read, and they will shape what millions of users get in return for one of the most-used tools. Knowing that ChatGPT is becoming ad-supported means that your prompts, interests and conversation history will become targeting signals, and that the “free” tier now has a cost paid in data.