OpenAI to begin testing ads in the U.S. for both free and Go tiers users

You either saw one of those Kling motion videos where you'd swap someone else's face with yours, and the action in the video would be just as accurate (sample here), or you were overwhelmed with excitement when Anthropic announced Claude Cowork and figured you don't have to spend so much time on tedious tasks anymore. If you didn't see any of this earlier in the week, it only means you live under a rock, but don't worry, we are here for you. We brought the news to your table inbox.

Let’s dig in!

OpenAI has finally answered the question of how it plans to actually make money beyond subscriptions: advertising is coming to ChatGPT. The company announced this week that it will start testing targeted ads for users on its free and Go tiers, marking a significant shift in how the AI giant plans to generate revenue.

The ads will appear at the bottom of conversations and will be targeted based on what you're talking about with the chatbot. So if you're asking ChatGPT for recipe ideas, don't be surprised if you start seeing ads for cooking equipment or meal delivery services. OpenAI is launching this initially in the United States for free users and subscribers to the new Go tier, which costs $8 a month and was introduced globally on Friday.

The company is framing this move as a way to keep ChatGPT free for people who aren't ready to pay for a subscription while still generating revenue. OpenAI's more expensive subscription tiers including Pro, Plus, Business, and Enterprise will remain ad-free, at least for now. If you hate the ads enough, you can always upgrade to a paid plan that doesn't have them.

Users will have some control over their ad experience. You can dismiss individual ads, see explanations for why you're being shown particular advertisements, and turn off personalization entirely, which should make the ads less targeted. OpenAI has also committed not to serve ads to anyone it believes is under 18 years old.

The company is making some promises about how advertising will work within ChatGPT. Most importantly, OpenAI says the chatbot will maintain "answer independence," meaning the ads won't influence the actual responses you get from the AI. They've also promised not to sell user data to advertisers, though the ads will still be targeted based on your conversation topics.

This dual strategy could be quite lucrative for OpenAI. The company is currently valued at $500 billion but has faced ongoing questions about how it will become profitable given the massive computational costs of running AI models. With advertising, OpenAI stands to make money from free and Go tier users who might never have paid for a subscription. At the same time, some users who like ChatGPT but hate ads will likely upgrade to more expensive plans to avoid them.

In its blog post announcing the change, OpenAI tried to position the move as altruistic, saying that its pursuit of advertising is always in support of its mission to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. It's a lofty way to describe what is ultimately a pretty straightforward business decision: ads make money, and OpenAI needs to make money.

An AI video generation startup called Higgsfield just hit a $1.3 billion valuation after raising an additional $80 million in an extension to its Series A round, bringing its total funding to $130 million.

Higgsfield was founded by Alex Mashrabov, who previously led generative AI at Snapchat after the company acquired his earlier startup, AI Factory, for $166 million in 2020. His new company offers a tool that lets anyone create and edit AI-generated videos, targeting everyone from casual users to professional social media teams.

The growth trajectory has been unusually fast. Five months after launching, Higgsfield claimed 11 million users. Nine months in, that number has climbed to over 15 million, and the company says it's on a $200 million annual revenue run rate. That figure apparently doubled from $100 million in just two months. Higgsfield is positioning itself alongside fast-growing companies like OpenAI, Slack, and Zoom in terms of its growth pace.

The company is trying to position itself as a serious business tool for professional social media marketers rather than just another AI content generator. But the reality is that Higgsfield is used for both legitimate marketing work and what's increasingly being called AI slop, low-quality content that floods social media.

A perfect example of the latter came last month when someone used Higgsfield to create a viral video called "Island Holiday" that depicted people mentioned in the Epstein files alongside fictional characters on vacation at Epstein's island. On the flip side, users also create fashion content and Hollywood-style storytelling projects that are more creative and less problematic.

This tension between legitimate use and questionable content is something Higgsfield will likely have to navigate as it grows. The company is emphasizing its adoption by professional marketers as evidence that it's evolved beyond casual content creation, but it can't control what people actually make with the tool.

Apple is launching a new subscription bundle called Creator Studio that bundles six of its professional creative apps together for $12.99 a month. This is Apple's latest effort to turn its powerful creative software into a recurring revenue stream rather than selling apps individually.

The bundle includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on both Mac and iPad, along with Motion, Compressor, and MainStage on Mac. Subscribers also get premium content for Apple's iWork apps like Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, and eventually access to Freeform across all devices. College students and educators can get the bundle for just $2.99 per month or $29.99 annually, which is a significant discount.

Creator Studio launches on January 28 with a one-month free trial for new subscribers. If you prefer to own your software outright, Apple says all the apps will still be available as one-time purchases on the Mac App Store, and the free versions of Numbers, Pages, Keynote, and Freeform aren't going anywhere.

To sweeten the deal, Apple is rolling out new features across these creative apps. Final Cut Pro is getting Transcript Search to find specific soundbites, Visual Search that lets you describe moments you're looking for, and Beat Detection. The iPad version of Final Cut Pro is adding Montage Maker for quick edits and Auto Crop to reframe content for different social media platforms.

Logic Pro is getting updates too, including Synth Player, Chord ID, a new sound library, and natural language search, which should make finding sounds and tools easier. Pixelmator Pro, which Apple acquired in 2024, is coming to iPad for the first time with full Apple Pencil support and fast image editing tools.

For people who use Apple's productivity apps, the Creator Studio subscription unlocks a new Content Hub in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote that provides access to high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations. There are also new premium templates and themes across all three apps.

Some interesting AI features are also coming to these apps. Keynote subscribers will get beta tools that can generate presentation drafts from text outlines, create presenter notes from existing slides, and automatically clean up layouts. Numbers is getting formula generation and a Magic Fill feature that can automatically fill tables using pattern recognition.

The pricing is actually competitive if you're someone who uses multiple apps in the bundle. Final Cut Pro alone costs $299.99 as a one-time purchase, and Logic Pro is $199.99. At $12.99 a month, the subscription pays for itself quickly if you need access to more than one or two of these apps, especially if you're bouncing between Mac and iPad.

Apple has officially confirmed what had been rumored for months, Google's Gemini AI will power Siri and other Apple AI features going forward. It's a significant move for a company that has historically prided itself on controlling both its hardware and software.

In a joint statement, Apple and Google said that after careful evaluation, they determined Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple's AI models. The multi-year partnership will involve Apple using Google's Gemini models and cloud technology for future foundational models, though the deal isn't exclusive.

While neither company has confirmed the price, previous reports suggest Apple could be paying Google around $1 billion annually for access to its AI technology. This comes after Apple spent time testing competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic before settling on Google as its partner.

The decision makes sense when you consider Apple's recent struggles with AI. The company has faced plenty of criticism for falling behind competitors, particularly with Siri, which has lagged far behind Google Assistant, Alexa, and other voice assistants in capabilities. Apple did release Apple Intelligence in 2024, which adds AI features to things like photo search and notification summaries, but the implementation has been subtle and sometimes invisible compared to the more dramatic AI features competitors have rolled out.

Apple's approach has prioritized privacy, with much of the AI processing happening on-device or through tightly controlled infrastructure. The company says it will maintain those privacy standards even as it partners with Google, though how exactly that works remains to be seen.

The partnership comes at an interesting time for both companies. Apple has delayed its "more personalized Siri" voice assistant upgrade several times, though a spokesperson told reporters an update is coming this year, possibly in the spring. Meanwhile, Google is in the middle of multiple antitrust lawsuits, including one that specifically targeted its relationship with Apple.

In August 2024, a federal judge ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search by paying companies like Apple to make Google the default search engine on their devices. Between 2021 and 2022, Google paid Apple about $38 billion for that default placement. In December 2025, the judge issued final remedies that ban Google from entering into exclusive default agreements like the one it had with Apple unless the agreement ends within a year.

This new AI partnership isn't technically the same as the search default deal, but it does deepen the ties between two companies that are simultaneously partners and competitors. Apple makes its own phones and computers, Google makes Pixel devices. Apple has its own app store, Google has the Play Store. But they also depend on each other in significant ways, and this AI deal is the latest example.

For Apple users, the partnership could mean a much smarter Siri that can actually compete with other AI assistants. For Google, it's another massive revenue stream and a way to get its AI technology onto hundreds of millions of devices.

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