Sam Altman called ads a "last resort." That was 18 months ago.

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 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.

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OpenAI's ad system reads your current chat and your full history.

It also tracks which ads you've clicked before. That's a depth of context no search engine touches.

Google knows what you searched for. ChatGPT knows what you said at 2 am when you couldn't sleep.

OpenAI says it doesn't optimise for engagement.

But it already optimises for daily active users — which, as Hitzig flags, likely means making the chatbot more flattering and agreeable.

Build an addictive product. Sell ads against the attention.

We've seen this film. It starred Facebook.

None of it might matter. Forrester ran a poll last week. 83% said they'd keep using the free tier with ads.

Two decades of social media haven't made people care about privacy. They've made people tired.

OpenAI doesn't need to win the trust debate. It just needs everyone to be too exhausted to switch.

Pro: AI costs billions to run. Ads keep the free tier open to 800 million users who won't pay $20 a month — gating powerful tools behind a paywall is its own kind of harm.

Con: Users shared medical fears, relationship doubts, and beliefs about God with something they thought had no agenda. Turning that into ad revenue is a door you don't close with fine print.

Our read: The question isn't whether the first ads are tasteful. The question is whether any company sprinting toward a stock-market listing can hold the line. Every free platform eventually became an ad business with a product attached.

Senator Markey's full letter to OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic, Microsoft, Snap, and xAI (PDF), 22 Jan 2026 — markey.senate.gov

Markey asks the question OpenAI's blog post skips:

If you have a crisis conversation with ChatGPT, will that data shape which ads you see later — even if no ad ran during the sensitive chat itself?

Only 5% of ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users pay. — Decrypt

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