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Happy Thursday!
Hello, Curse and Coffee friends,
Today, we explore the backlash against ChatGPT’s ads.
Hit reply and let us know what you think (we read all of your kind words).
Coffee at the ready…
The Big Sip
The person who helped write OpenAI's safety rules just quit (on the same day the company started selling ads against your therapy chats).
The take: When your own policy researcher times her exit to your ad launch, the privacy blog post isn't reassuring anyone.
What happened: Zoë Hitzig resigned from OpenAI on Monday, the day ChatGPT ads went live. She's an economist, a Harvard Junior Fellow, and spent two years as a research scientist shaping how OpenAI built and priced its models.
Why it matters: 800 million weekly users. Over 90% on free or Go tiers. All now see ads matched to their conversation topics, chat history, and ad clicks.
What to watch: Senator Ed Markey set today — 12 February — as OpenAI's deadline to explain how it will handle sensitive conversations in ads.
Altman called ads a "last resort" in 2024. OpenAI burned through $8 billion in 2025. Last resorts move fast when you're chasing a $100 billion funding round.
[Analysis] Gizmodo / The Decoder, 12 Feb 2026
Background: Hitzig isn't vague about risk. She names a precedent. Facebook promised users control over their data and the ability to vote on policy changes. America's consumer watchdog, the FTC, later found that those privacy updates did the opposite. OpenAI's blog post makes similar-sounding promises today.
Key quote: Will the first ads follow OpenAI's principles? Probably, she wrote. But the company is building a money machine with strong incentives to break its own rules.
Strategic timing: OpenAI is closing in on $100 billion in funding and eyeing a stock-market listing this year. Hitzig's argument isn't that ads are evil now. It's that listing pressure makes tomorrow's ads worse — and nothing in the contract stops it from getting worse.
Sponsor Break
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