Good morning, Reader. Sam Altman once called ads in ChatGPT a "last resort" but now, they're officially on the way.
OpenAI will begin testing targeted ads for free and budget tier users in the U.S., marking a controversial monetization shift that could set the tone for how the entire AI industry balances user trust with revenue pressures.
In Todays Edusmark AI :
OpenAI officially bringing ads to ChatGPT
Code from your phone with OpenAI’s Codex
Musk, OpenAI trade (more) public blows
4 new AI tools, Relevant Job roles & more
Image source: OpenAI
OpenAI just announced it will begin testing targeted advertisements in ChatGPT for free and Go tier users in the U.S. putting into motion a major (and controversial) monetization shift for the AI giant as it eyes a late-2026 IPO.
The details:
Ads will appear below responses as "Sponsored Recommendations," targeted based on conversations but excluded from health, politics, and underage users.
The move coincides with the company’s $8/month ChatGPT Go tier launching globally, with ads included to offset the lower price point.
Premium tiers (Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise) remain ad-free, with OAI pledging to never sell user data or let ads influence ChatGPT's answers.
Sam Altman had said in 2024 that ads in ChatGPT would be a “last resort”, but more recently said he “wasn’t totally against it” if it didn’t violate user trust.
Why it matters: We’ve heard conflicting statements from OpenAI’s leadership in the past on ads, but the March hiring of Instacart’s Fidji Simo hinted at both the IPO and advertising route. Ads in AI assistants are a slippery slope, so the execution will be a nuanced moment to watc potentially setting the tone for the industry as a whole.
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AI TRAINING
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In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to 10× your code output with Codex by setting it up in Cursor, running it in the cloud from anywhere (even your phone), and configuring an agent that automatically reviews your code for you
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Install Codex by going to the Codex quickstart, selecting your IDE (Cursor), and launching a new Codex Agent inside that editor.
Install Codex by going to the Codex quickstart, selecting your IDE (Cursor), and launching a new Codex Agent inside that editor
Ask Codex to generate an agents.md file from your project (or a PRD/spec if starting fresh), then initialize Git so Codex understands your codebase, rules
Explore slash commands (like /review, /status, and /context) to review changes, manage context, and control how Codex reasons across your files
Push the project to GitHub and connect it to Codex to access from anywhere, and enable automatic PR reviews so every pull request is reviewed in the cloud
Pro tip: Code locally in Cursor, then hand off reviews to cloud Codex cloud runs don’t count against your local usage.
ELON MUSK & OPENAI
Image source: Screenshots from X, OpenAI
Elon Musk and OpenAI continued to spar ahead of their April trial, with Musk sharing anecdotes from Greg Brockman’s 2017 private journal and Sam Altman accusing Musk of "cherry-picking" and OAI releasing correspondence of its own
Step-by-step:
The file details Brockman’s convo with Ilya Sutskever on OAI’s structure and their desire to become a B-Corp, along with concerns over Musk’s involvement.
Altman posted notes of Musk wanting to “accumulate $80B for a self-sustaining city on Mars” and a succession plan for his children to control AGI.
OpenAI published a blog of its own highlighting context and discrepancies between Musk’s filing and Brockman’s notes, calling it “The truth Elon left out”.
Musk tweeted, "Can't wait to start the trial. The discovery and testimony will blow your mind", and is reportedly seeking $134B in damages in the lawsuit.
Why it matters: Get the popcorn ready, folks. If the early discovery nuggets are any indication, we're in for the messiest, most expensive AI lawsuit ever and a front-row seat to the origin story of tech's biggest current arch-rivalry. Both sides clearly think the full record helps them, which means April is about to get VERY entertaining.
AI TRAINING
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Trending AI Tools
🧠 Scroll.ai - Turn any knowledge base into enterprise-grade chatbots, with accuracy and depth far beyond generic models*
💼 Claude Cowork - Claude Code’s agentic abilities, now available to Pro tier
⚙️ Replit - New capabilities to easily build and deploy mobile apps
📸 FLUX.2 Klein - BFL’s new ultra-fast, powerful AI image editing model
Everything else in AI today
Black Forest Labs released FLUX.2[klein], a new speed-focused variant of the company’s powerful AI editing model.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said that China’s models “may be only a matter of months behind” U.S. labs, but have yet to show innovation surpassing the frontier.
Elon Musk announced that xAI’s Colossus 2 supercomputer powering Grok is now live, marking the world’s first operational gigawatt cluster in the world.
The Wikimedia Foundation announced new AI partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity, and Mistral, enabling training on the company’s 65M+ articles.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar published a blog revealing the company hit $20B+ in annualized revenue for 2025, tripling YoY, with compute expanding 10x since 2023.
The top AI roles
The top AI roles in January 2026 cluster around engineering, data, genAI application building, and governance, with strong growth for agentic AI and product roles AI / ML Engineer - Designs, trains, and deploys models and ships them into production systems across products and services.
GenAI / LLM Application Developer – Builds chatbots, copilots, and agents using foundation models, RAG, and tool/agent frameworks.
AI Product Manager – Owns AI features, defines use cases, and aligns model capabilities with business impact and metrics.
AI Solutions Architect – Designs end‑to‑end AI systems across cloud, data, security, and applications for large‑scale deployment.
Responsible AI / Governance Specialist – Focuses on ethics, risk, compliance, and policies for safe and regulated AI adoption.
That’s it for today!
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