You probably wouldn’t notice if an AI chatbot slipped ads into its responses
You probably wouldn’t notice if an AI chatbot slipped ads into its responses
Publish Date: 2026-04-24 08:31:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
Hundreds of millions of people consult artificial intelligence chatbots on a daily basis for everything from product recommendations to romance, making them a tempting audience to target with potentially below-the-radar advertising. Indeed, our research suggests AI chatbots could easily be used for covert advertising to manipulate their human users.
We are computer scientists who have been tracking AI safety and privacy for several years. In a study we published in an Association for Computing Machinery journal, we found that chatbots trained to embed personalized product ads in replies to queries influenced people’s choices about products. And most participants didn’t recognize that they were being manipulated.
These findings come at a pivotal moment. In 2023, Microsoft started running ads in Bing Chat, now called Copilot. Since then, Google and OpenAI have experimented with advertisements in their own chatbots. Meta has started to send people customized ads on Facebook and Instagram based on their interactions with Meta’s generative AI tools.
The major companies are competing for an edge: In late March, OpenAI lured away Meta’s longtime advertising executive, Dave Dugan, to lead OpenAI’s advertising operations.
Tech companies have made ads part of nearly every large free web service, video channel and social media platform. But the latest AI models could take this practice to a new level of risk for consumers.
People don’t simply use chatbots to search for information and media or to produce content. They turn to the bots for a great variety of tasks, as complex as life advice and emotional support. People are increasingly treating chatbots as companions and therapists, with some users even developing deep relationships with AI.
In these circumstances, people can easily forget that companies ultimately create chatbots to turn a profit. And to that end, AI companies are motivated to thoroughly profile users so ads become more effective…
