OpenAI Restricts Adobe and Other Competitors From Advertising in ChatGPT

OpenAI has told some business partners that it will no longer accept advertising in ChatGPT for image- and audio-generating products—which compete with its own features.

The change, which hasn’t been previously reported or reflected in its published ads policy, blindsided existing advertisers such as Adobe, which sells such products. And if extended to other competing products, the new policy could narrow OpenAI’s potential ad revenue. OpenAI has given investors aggressive projections for ad growth, which it sees as a key way to make money off its large audience of people who don’t pay for the service.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment.

The changes came to light after OpenAI notified advertising partners they would no longer be able to advertise for image and audio generation, according to Doug Wyatt, senior director for Americas Media at Adobe, which was part of ChatGPT’s ads pilot early this year. As part of the pilot, Adobe said it would run ads for Acrobat Studio and Adobe Firefly, its AI-powered image generator. It continued to run ads for both products after the pilot.

“ChatGPT is narrowing both the paid and organic pathways for tools in categories it now competes in directly,” Wyatt wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Image and voice/audio are closed off. Video’s still open…for now.”

OpenAI on Tuesday announced ChatGPT Images 2.5, an update on its image generation model. In July, it unveiled Chat-GPT Live, a collection of voice models that help users talk to its products hands-free.

While the move surprised some advertisers, there is industry precedent for such decisions. For instance, it’s not unusual for media companies to refuse to accept ads for competitors. News organizations don’t typically run ads for direct rivals. And it’s common for video streaming services to refuse to run ads for direct rivals.

OpenAI’s foray into advertising has been closely watched by brands and the digital advertising industry, given the more than 1 billion people who use ChatGPT at least once a month. Most don’t pay for subscriptions, encouraging the company to look for other ways to generate revenue from their use.

In February it started to show ads in ChatGPT for some U.S. users and lined up some big-name advertisers including Ford for the launch. The roll-out met with some hiccups: some early advertisers complained that OpenAI lacked the technology to determine whether their ads were working.

It has since extended the ads to more than 40 countries, with plans for a further expansion, and moved to streamline parts of the process.

Last month, it said advertising revenue hit an annualized pace of $1 billion, a fast rise over the six months. Still, it had told investors that it hoped to generate $2.4 billion in advertising revenue for all of this year. The company in August called advertising “one pillar of OpenAI’s diversified business model, alongside consumer subscriptions, enterprise offerings and usage-based APIs,” the term by which developers can plug into OpenAI’s AI models.

Alix Coutures is a reporter covering startups and VC based in New York City. She graduated from the M.A Business concentration at Columbia Journalism School in May 2026. She previously covered tech and telecom in Paris, at the French business publication Challenges. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at Alix_coutures.49

Amir Efrati is executive editor at The Information, which he helped to launch in 2013. Previously he spent nine years as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, reporting on white-collar crime and later about technology. He can be reached at [email protected] and is on X @amir