Google: No ads in Gemini

Google's AI chatbot and assistant Gemini will remain ad-free. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis stated this in an interview with Alex Heath in Davos. “The company has no plans whatsoever to bring ads into Gemini.” Instead, they want to focus on developing and offering the best assistant on all levels. “If you want a truly universal assistant that you can trust, that is personally tailored to you and knows a lot about you, then you want to be sure that the recommendations it gives you are really good for you, unbiased and unadulterated.”

Basically, this is not a new statement. Google had previously said that there would be no advertising in Gemini. However, there have recently been rumors that Google has changed its plans.

The confirmation in the interview also comes just in time for the introduction of advertising in ChatGPT. Competitor OpenAI apparently has to take this step to secure its financing. Ads are expected to appear in the free version of ChatGPT and in the inexpensive ChatGPT Go subscription model as early as February. Hassabis also says in the interview that it is “interesting” how quickly OpenAI is going this far. “Perhaps they feel they need to generate more revenue.”

Google and Meta already make money from advertising

For Google, advertising is certainly not an unknown territory. Quite the opposite, Google primarily makes its money from advertising. However, the revenue comes from search and other services. This makes it possible to keep the chatbot and AI assistant free of ads. AI development and services are essentially cross-subsidized.

Mark Zuckerberg has also hinted at something similar. Meta can pay for its AI division thanks to advertising revenue from Facebook, Instagram, and co. Whether Meta AI and Gemini will still show ads at some point remains to be seen.

(emw)