OpenAI’s Sleazy Ad Tracking Gamble: ChatGPT Users Are Now the Product

Let’s not mince words: OpenAI is now test-driving the same third-party-style tracking garbage that tanked web privacy in the first place, except this time they’re coming for your ChatGPT sessions. This week, buried under a mountain of AI hype and LinkedIn platitudes, OpenAI started slipping persistent identifiers into ChatGPT ads. Why? To juice their ad measurement and stalk user behavior like it’s 2012 and GDPR never happened.

Here’s the play: slap a unique ID on every user, follow them across prompts and sessions, and serve advertisers the kind of deep engagement metrics they salivate over. All in the name of ‘improved ad relevance.’ Sound familiar? That’s because it’s the exact same surveillance playbook Facebook and Google wrote—and regulators spent a decade fighting.

Let’s be clear: the consent theater around this is a joke. No normal person in Queens at 8:30 on a rainy Wednesday morning is reading 4,000 words of privacy policy before they ask ChatGPT for train schedules or election facts. OpenAI’s lawyers know it, the ad ecosystem knows it, and you, dear reader, should know it too.

The industry lapdogs are already spinning this as “necessary innovation”—because, surprise, tracking is how the AI sausage gets sold. Do you want a better ad, or do you want your every question piped into a shadow profile? That’s the real choice. This isn’t abstract: persistent IDs mean your late-night queries, your political anxieties, your half-baked business ideas are now behavioral ad fodder. Don’t pretend you’re okay with it just because the UI is shiny.

Here’s my uncomfortable recommendation, and I know the adtech crowd will hate me for it: block this crap at the network level. Yes, even if it breaks a feature. If OpenAI wants your data for targeting, make them work for it. Because once this stuff is entrenched, you’re not getting your privacy back—no matter how many times they say ‘responsible AI.’