Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said he was “surprised” that OpenAI has already moved to introduce ads within its AI chatbots. In An interview with Axios at DavosThe AI ​​leader responded to a question about using ads to monetize AI services, saying the idea was something Google’s team was thinking about “very carefully.”

Hassabis also said his team isn’t feeling pressure from the tech giant to make a “knee-jerk” decision on advertising, despite how important ads are to Google’s core business.

OpenAI in the news on Friday following comments from DeepMind’s co-founder will begin Exam advertisement As a means of generating Additional revenue from AI chatbot segment 800 million weekly active users Those who do not have a paid subscription.

However, the growing consideration of OpenAI has forced ads to be considered Infrastructure and energy consumptionUsers may decide to change how they view the Service

“I’m a little surprised that they’ve moved there so quickly,” Hassabis said, referring to OpenAI’s advertising adoption. “I mean, look, there’s nothing wrong with advertising, advertising… they’ve funded a lot of the consumer Internet. And if done well, they can be effective,” he clarified.

“But in the case of assistants, and if you think of chatbots as an assistant that can be helpful — and ideally, in my mind, as they become more powerful, the kind of technology that works for you as an individual… there’s a question about how do ads fit into that model? … You want to trust your assistant, so how does that work?” he asked.

Repetitive Some preliminary comments From another Davos interview, Hassabis also said that Google has “no current plans” to advertise on its AI chatbot. Instead, the company will monitor the situation to see how users react.

Of course, we’ve already seen consumer reactions to the idea of ​​ads intruding on people’s conversations with AI assistants. When OpenAI started exploring a feature last month Suggested apps to try During user chats, for example, people responded negatively, saying these suggestions felt like intrusive advertising. After a while, OpenAI has turned off app suggestionswhich it claimed were not actually advertisements because they had “no financial component”.

But whether money exchanged hands or not didn’t anger users. Rather, how app suggestions degraded the quality of the experience.

It’s something that also worries Hassabis, his comments suggest.

He explains that using a chatbot is a very different experience than using Google Search. Through search, Google already understands a user’s intent, so it can show potentially useful ads Chatbots, on the other hand, are meant to be helpful digital assistants who know about you and can help you in many areas of your life, he said.

“I think it’s very different from the search use case. So I think there, it should be thought about very carefully,” he added.

Today’s focus is also on making Gemini more useful for every user The newly launched personalization feature was announced today For Google’s AI mode. Now, users can choose to tap Gemini’s AI on their Gmail and Photos for appropriate responses in search AI mode, as The Gemini app just added a personal intelligence feature which can refer to users’ Gmail, photos, searches and YouTube history.

While personalized ad targeting is the business that sustains the free web, pushing an ad on a user while in conversation with an AI assistant can feel annoying. This is why customers rejected Amazon’s previous efforts Add ads to the Alexa experience – They wanted an assistant, Not individual buyers Hawking things to buy them.

Hassabis said he doesn’t see top-down pressure to force ads into AI products, though he acknowledged there may be a way to do them later.

“We don’t feel any immediate pressure to make knee-jerk decisions like that — I think that’s been the history of what we’ve done at GoogleMind — we have to be very scientific, and rigorous and thoughtful about every step we take — whether it’s the technology itself or the product,” he noted.