Hidden Ads: What Your AI Chatbot Might Not Tell You

You know how sometimes you ask an AI chatbot, like ChatGPT or Google's Bard, for information? Say, 'What's the best bank for a small business in Brisbane?' Well, there's a new development that could subtly influence the answer you get.

Major publications, including Time Magazine, are now creating special versions of their websites just for AI programs, known as 'webpage crawlers'. These crawlers are what AI uses to gather information from the internet. The catch is, these special AI-only pages can include advertisements that regular human visitors never see.

The idea behind this is to influence what the AI 'learns' and, in turn, what it might tell you about brands or services. If an AI chatbot is fed specific ads through these hidden pages, it might be more likely to mention those advertised brands when you ask it a question. It's a clever, if a little sneaky, way for companies to get their message across.

For everyday Australians and small business owners, this raises an important point about the information we get from AI. We often trust these tools to give us unbiased, factual answers. But if companies can discreetly advertise directly to the AI, it means we need to be more aware that the information we receive might not always be purely objective. It's a new frontier in advertising, and one worth keeping an eye on.

This isn't to say all information from AI is now suspect, but it's a reminder to approach AI answers with a healthy dose of critical thinking, just as you would with any information source. Understanding how these systems are fed information helps us make better decisions about what we read and trust.