For revenue reasons, OpenAI will soon start testing advertising inside its AI chatbot ChatGPT. Some users may not mind it, while others may hate it. But there’s a question on everyone’s mind: Is this the beginning of ads on all AI chatbots? As far as Google’s Gemini is concerned, users may need to relax, as DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has clarified that the company has no plans to introduce ads in the near future.

Speaking in an interview with Alex Heath on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis confirmed that Google has no plans to place ads inside its Gemini AI chatbot. “There are no plans to put ads inside Gemini,” Hassabis said, responding to a question about whether Google would follow OpenAI’s lead. He said that while advertising can work across many digital products, blending ads directly into a conversational AI assistant requires extreme care. “If you want a true universal assistant that people actually trust and rely on, you have to be very thoughtful about how you monetize it,” he said.

Asked about OpenAI’s decision, Hassabis described the move as “interesting”, saying it comes very early in the product’s lifecycle. “Maybe they feel they need to earn more revenue,” he said, pointing to the financial pressures faced by pure-play AI companies that lack diverse income streams. However, Hassabis said that unlike OpenAI, Google could rely on its vast search and advertising business to finance AI development without directly monetizing Gemini.

So how does Google plan to keep Gemini ad-free? Well, Google executives have repeatedly positioned Gemini and Search as complementary rather than competing products. Dan Taylor, Google’s vice president of global ads, previously highlighted that Search remains the primary platform for business intent and discovery, while Gemini is designed for creation, reasoning and analysis. This separation potentially allows Google to explore AI-powered monetization within search without inserting ads into the chatbot experience.

According to Hassabis, maintaining a clean and fair native experience is vital to the long-term success of Gemini. He warned that poorly executed advertising could undermine trust in AI responses. “I think if you start mixing it with advertising, it could work, but you just have to be very careful,” he said. “There are many ways to do bad.”

And Hassabis is not alone in this view. Earlier, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had said that companies do not need to make money from billions of free users just because of competitive pressure.

Chatgpt will host ads soon

Meanwhile, OpenAI is already ready to move forward with ads. The company plans to begin testing ads inside ChatGPT in the coming weeks as it looks to offset rapidly rising infrastructure costs. Ads will initially appear below responses for logged-in adult users in the United States who are on the free tier or the new $8-per-month ChatGPAT Go plan, while paid tiers like Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise will remain ad-free.