OpenAI is testing "Sponsored Agents" in ChatGPT, allowing advertisers to embed interactive chatbots directly within conversations to promote their products. Rather than simply displaying an ad, users who engage with these agents can ask questions and receive tailored responses before being directed to the advertiser's website, effectively bringing customer-service-style sales chat into ChatGPT itself. The move marks a further step in OpenAI's expansion into advertising as a revenue stream, following its earlier introduction of sponsored content within the platform.

The feature is currently being trialled with a select group of US advertisers already using OpenAI's advertising tools. An example shown by OpenAI depicted a user asking for a recipe being steered instead towards a sponsored agent for a meal-kit subscription service. Alongside this, OpenAI also announced a natural-language "Ads Manager" plugin letting advertisers create and manage campaigns directly within ChatGPT, plus new advertising integrations for HubSpot and Shopify users, all part of what the company describes as building "an advertising platform with AI at its centre."