The Voluntary Hostage: ChatGPT ads just landed in India but the free ride was already being billed

What would you feel if someone took your memo­ry, started making money from it and you got no slice of it? It is a question that ties into ChatGPT rolling out advertisements in India after first introducing it in the US and other countries.

Currently, it offers free access to the platform and adver­tisements are restricted to those, popping up after a couple of questions that the AI answers for you. The higher paid tiers will still be ad-free. Still, what you thought was free is now becoming a transaction. But what exactly is being transacted? It is your attention, the premise for all advertis­ing, but the phenomenon becomes amplified with new technologies like social media and, now, generative AI.

There are other differences. If you don’t like an ad while watching a television chan­nel, you can just switch it away. What brings you into AI’s embrace is the promise of a freebie, fencing you in eventually until you can’t get out. Social media does it in a different way—through networking ef­fects. Because everyone you know is in one platform, you remain stuck there. These are fences that, in one sense, we create ourselves. And then comes the ads.

You can switch over from one model to a different com­pany’s at present by exporting your data but the experience you are used to changes. Plus, there are other tools holding you in, like the tasks they perform. To use Claude Cowork is to hand over your computer to it and see magical things happen like getting messy folders organised or it waiting in line at a concert’s online ticket counter. It uses your life’s story while doing these tasks for you. Switching a superef­ficient personal assistant is more difficult.

Advertisements will probably become a major compo­nent of how AI companies are going to recover the trillions of dollars they invest, but for that to work you and your memory will have to become a willing hostage to them. Even the poorest person with a phone has a value as an attention giver. Recognise it even if you can’t do anything about it.