February 20, 2026
Your toaster wants to sell you soap
Every company building your AI assistant is now an ad company
Always‑on AI wants to watch you—and sell you stuff
TLDR: OpenAI put ads in ChatGPT as AI makers race to build always‑on assistants that hear and see everything. The crowd’s alarm bells are deafening: big calls to ban ads, warnings that “always on” clashes with privacy laws, and a push for on‑device tech or strict regulation before surveillance becomes normal.
OpenAI flipped the ad switch on ChatGPT and the internet collectively spit out its coffee. The article’s doom bell is loud: every “smart helper” is becoming an ad machine, and the next wave of gadgets—tiny, screenless, always‑listening, always‑looking—will live on your face, in your ears, and in your home. One line sums it up: the question isn’t whether these assistants will be always on; it’s who controls the data. The author says the only escape hatch is on‑device AI (no cloud), with a not‑so‑subtle nudge to Juno’s preorders.
The comments? Pure fireworks. Distrust is the top vibe—one user’s trust level in “never phones home” promises is literally zero. Regulators get a standing ovation: fans want ads in AI banned now, with Europe’s GDPR (privacy law) waved like a red card at “always on.” Another camp calls the whole thing a policy problem, not a tech glitch—use laws, not vibes. There’s even a side‑quest: someone points out the piece “forgot Anthropic,” turning the thread into a mini leaderboard for who’s building the least creepy bot. Jokes flew too: readers mocked the kitchen demo—“Wake word is ‘Buy Now’”—and imagined assistants upselling dish soap mid‑toddler meltdown. One thing’s clear: people fear trading their lives’ background noise for ad targeting, and they’re ready to fight it.
Key Points
- •OpenAI announced on Jan 16 that ChatGPT would show advertisements; ads were live by Feb 9.
- •OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s hardware startup io for $6.5 billion to build a contextually aware, screenless device with cameras and microphones.
- •The article asserts AI assistant companies are funded by advertising and are building always-on sensing hardware.
- •Wake-word activation models are deemed insufficient for proactive assistance, which requires continuous context across audio and vision.
- •Local on-device inference is proposed as the architectural solution to mitigate privacy risks of cloud-based processing and advertising influence.