OpenAI is assessing advertising as a way potentially to boost its revenue streams and make a profit, Sarah Friar, chief financial officer told the Financial Times.
The Microsoft-backed group has been hiring advertising specialists said the report from rivals such as Meta and Google as part of the plan, the report added.
Friar qualified the comments slightly in a statement afterwards, saying that significant growth opportunities exist in the original business model and that advertising is not being actively pursued at present.
OpenAI recently launched a search engine to boost its reach and rival Perplexity recently introduced a pilot advertising scheme.
Sam Altman, its founder and chief executive, is reportedly becoming keener on the idea of ads as one way to become profitable and avoid repeated funding rounds.
OpenAI’s success so far has been built on its ChatGPT chatbot, which now has more than 250 million weekly active users but at a huge cost, which has prompted the search for other revenues.
Licences and business and developer interfaces are two other areas that OpenAI is reportedly exploring, but consumer markets are said to be more lucrative.