This is actually the primary message I got from the recent Bing announcement and demos. When the new Bing makes a suggestion for a TV, Microsoft wants to have sold those suggestion spots to the highest bidder.
I wonder what happens, though, if you ask ChatGPT, "Is there a better toothpaste than Colgate"? The instance this question is not answered truthfully, ChatGPT becomes garbage.
They'll spend a lot of effort scrubbing any facts that they don't like or don't suit their agenda and narrative. Whether that's the agenda of advertisers, the powers that be, or the "privileged" classes won't matter.
You think Googles search results are opaque now?? Wait till it's hidden behind a 2 trillion parameter neural network.
And by extension of that, "fake news" will be targeted and the all knowing AI knowledge base will be used to determine what is false or true. This will be the end of disent. When they say we won't own anything, and we'll be happy, they also mean knowledge.
This will be a game of cat and mouse between the search companies and the regulators. It has to be clear it is an advertisement of sorts, at least in most countries, however, there are different ways to do this. It will put a significant number of lawyers' kids through university.
Isn't it lovely, just when OS vendors (at least iOS) finally decide to tighten their privacy controls to avoid ad-revenue-based companies to track more and more, a new and more subtle form of advertising comes up.
It would be very difficult for people to differentiate what's an ad and what's not. At least google and likes showed "Ad" or "Sponsored'. Will AI do it?
It will be a game of cat and mouse between the search companies and the regulators. I am sure it needs to be "clear" it is an advertisement. However, this can be done in several ways, some too subtle for the regulator's taste.
ChatGPT is good at the moment, as it has not yet included advertising or has been gamed by SEO. This will change.