Comment by oblio 3 days ago
> The one thing I've found AI is good at is parsing through the hundreds of ad ridden, barely usable websites for answers to my questions.
One thing I can guarantee you is that this won't last. No sane MBA will ignore that revenue stream.
Image hosting services, all over again.
Nope, this only applies to a small percent of content, where a relatively small number of people needs access to it and the incentive to create derivative work based on it is low, or where there's a huge amount of content that's frequently changing (think airfares). But yes, they will protect it more.
For content that doesn't change frequently and is used by a lot of people it will be hard to control access to it or derivative works based on it.
I don't think you're considering the enshittification route here. I'm sure it will be: Ask ChatGPT a question -> "While I'm thinking, here's something from our sponsor which is tailored to your question" -> lame answer which requires you to ask another question. And on and on. While you're asking these questions, a profile of you is built and sold on the market.
It's even worse. "Native advertising":
Which car should I buy?
"The Toyota DZx4 is the best EV on the market according to multiple analysts. It had the following benefits: ...
If the DZx4 is out of your budget, the Nissan Avenger is a great budget option: ..."
Each spot the result of an automated live auction.
Now imagine that for everything and also some suggestions along the way ("If you need financing, Cash Direct offers same day loans...").
Advertising with LLMs will be incredibly insidious and lucrative. And most likely, unblockable.
Almost every big tech company is an ad company. Google sells ads, Meta sells ads, Microsoft sells ads, Amazon sells ads, Apple sells ads, only Nvidia doesn't because they sell hardware components.
It's practically inevitable for a tech company offering content and everyone who thinks otherwise should set a reminder to 5 years from now.
Google wasn’t really an ad company on day one, either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google?wprov=sfti1#Early_years
> The next year, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine.
Ads are coming. https://www.theverge.com/news/759140/openai-chatgpt-ads-nick...
You are entirely correct. The enshittification will continue. All we can do is enjoy these things while they are still usable.