Глава ChatGPT о привязанности к искусственному интеллекту, рекламе и планах на будущее

Welcome to Decoder! I’m Alex Heath, your Thursday episode guest host and deputy editor at The Verge. Today, I’m talking to Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT at OpenAI. While Sam Altman is definitely the public face of the company, Nick has been leading ChatGPT’s development since the very beginning. It’s now the fastest-growing software product of all time, reaching 700 million people each week. Nick hasn’t done a lot of interviews, and I had a lot of ideas for where I wanted to take this conversation.

But then, something eye-opening happened after the launch of GPT-5. People really missed talking to OpenAI’s last model, 4o, so much so that the company quickly brought it back. As you’ll hear, Nick wasn’t expecting this kind of backlash, and it’s already changed how OpenAI plans to shut down models in the future. To me, the whole episode says a lot about how attached people have become to ChatGPT. So, I pressed Nick on this topic quite a bit. We also talked a lot about the future of ChatGPT itself, including whether it will ever show ads, the progress OpenAI is making on hallucinations, and why he thinks the product eventually won’t look like a chatbot at all.

Okay. Here’s Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT at OpenAI. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Alex Heath: Nick, I really appreciate you doing this. You haven’t done many interviews, so it’s exciting to have you on the show. We’re taping this the week after the rollout of GPT-5, which I think gives us a lot to talk about. I actually wanted to start with that rollout. It seems like there was a pretty significant backlash when you removed 4o, the previous model. Why did you remove it in the first place, and were you expecting that kind of reaction?

Nick Turley: Yeah, it's a good question. We removed 4o because we felt like GPT-5 was a significant step forward, and we wanted users to experience the latest and greatest. We also wanted to simplify things a bit, as having multiple models can be confusing. We did anticipate *some* reaction, but honestly, the intensity of it was surprising. People really had an emotional connection to 4o, and it was clear that it wasn't just about the features, but about the personality and the experience they had built with it.

Alex Heath: You mentioned that emotional connection. It’s interesting to see that people are forming these kinds of relationships with AI. What does that say about the future of these technologies and how we should be developing them?

Nick Turley: It’s something we’re taking very seriously. We always knew that people would use ChatGPT as a tool to get things done, but we underestimated the extent to which it would become a companion, a source of comfort, or even a friend. That means we have a responsibility to develop these technologies in a way that is ethical, responsible, and doesn’t exploit those emotional connections. It’s not just about building a powerful AI, but about building an AI that is genuinely helpful and beneficial to people's lives.

Alex Heath: Let’s talk about the business model. Less than 10 percent of the user base is paid, the vast majority is free. Is that right?

Nick Turley: The vast majority is free. I think the last stat we published is 20 million subscribers. So you have hundreds of millions of free users and tens of millions of paid users.

Alex Heath: You make money through subscriptions. ChatGPT has roughly quadrupled its user base in the last year, so there is money there, for sure. At the same time, what I’m hearing is that you’re going to have to do more beyond subscriptions to support the business in the long run as you hit billions of users. So, that brings me to the natural question: ads?

Nick Turley: I question the premise that subscriptions will stall out. The reason we went with subscriptions originally wasn’t because we felt like it was the best way to monetize. We needed a way of turning away demand when we couldn’t keep the site up. Over time, we found that it’s an incredible business model because it’s deeply aligned with users. It’s surprising that even our most recent cohorts monetize as well or better than earlier ones. I think it’s a good sign. I don’t think we’re going to stall out. We’ve also seen growth in our business users. We’ve passed 5 million paying business users, up from 3 million a couple of months earlier.

So, I don’t see the vast majority of users being free as a liability. I think it’s a funnel that we can build off of. We’re building differentiated offerings for people willing to pay. I’m hesitant to say we won’t use ads, though. I don’t think that’s a question we’ve answered.

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