OpenAI is bringing ChatGPT ads to Europe later this month and plans to ask users for consent to personalize them, rather than leaning on the “legitimate interest” argument other ad platforms like Meta have used to try to skip that step.
Quick Backstory: Under GDPR, a company needs a legal basis to process your data. Two of those reasons are “consent” (explicitly saying yes) and “legitimate interest,” which covers ordinary processing that would be near impossible to ask permission for every time, such as fraud detection, network security, keeping records to defend a lawsuit, or sending a customer an invoice. Meta and others spent years claiming that behavioral advertising fit under legitimate interest so they’d never have to ask, until EU regulators ruled in 2023 that it doesn’t. Flash forward to 2026 and OpenAI has no choice but to ask for consent from day one.
One additional note: Meta initially responded to the 2023 rulings with a “consent or pay” model, making paying a subscription the only way to opt out of personalized ads in the region. The Commission thought that was bullshit and hit them with a DMA fine. So instead of recreating that “pay or consent” model that bit Meta in the ass, OpenAI is building explicit consent into its free tiers from the beginning, to avoid an inevitable headache later on.
Free and Go accounts that opt in to personalized ads can be targeted on their ad history and interests, along with what advertisers report people bought after clicking an ad. Opting out of personalization doesn’t remove the ads, but merely stops them from drawing on your chat history. Non-personalized ads will still get served based on whatever the current chat is about and the user’s approximate location.
Since ChatGPT ads initially launched in the U.S. in February, the pilot program has since expanded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and Brazil. Digiday notes that the company has already laid the groundwork for ads in Europe since its June 4 privacy policy update, which stated that it could use data from users to personalize ads, without offering a timeline.
