GPT-5’s new router, which automatically decides which model to direct a user query to, has had a controversial debut, but it could be the start of something more significant — ads finally coming in a big way to AI models.
AI and semiconductor analysis firm Semi Analysis has explained why the creation of a router could help bring monetization to AI models. The model router was first introduced in GPT-5, and helps direct user queries to appropriate models — simple questions use a basic model that’s cheap to run, while more complex questions that require effort use thinking models, which cost a lot more to run. This has attracted the ire of AI power users, who feel they’ve lost the ability to pick the model for themselves.
But user queries being routed could the the first step in segregating user queries based on their intent. Thus far, the same model answered all queries, and this wasn’t exactly suitable to run ads — Ads would need real-time data, and answers would need to be tailored as such as to mention advertisers who’d paid to be a part of the answer. But what a router could allow OpenAI to do is route queries with potential commercial intent to a model that could more closely resemble traditional search results.
For instance, like Semi Analysis says in its blog, if a user asks why the sky is blue, OpenAI could send the query to its regular model. But if a user wants to know about “lawyers near me”, OpenAI could kick off its commercial model, and not only give out useful answers, but also include some paid results in the mix.
OpenAI, of course, would need to disclose which parts of its answer are sponsored and which are organic. But Google already does this well with “sponsored links” at the top of search results, and it’s likely that OpenAI will be able to come up with a similar mechanism. As such, the results of these “commercial” queries could look very different from the results of its usual models, with paying advertisers being a part of the answers.
And OpenAI now has the traffic to attempt something like this. It’s already the fifth most visited website in the world, and is growing fast. Even if a small fraction of its queries have commercial intent, OpenAI could potentially route them to a new model that dynamically takes advertiser data, possibly through a bidding system like Google, and shows results.
It would be crucial for the long-term success of AI models to include ads in the mix. AI models are expensive to run, and all frontier model companies are currently losing money in providing their models to a mixture of free and paid users. But while the number of paid subscribers might increase with time, these companies would need to make it economically feasible for themselves to provide services for free. Ads have democratized internet access for decades, with services like Google and Facebook — which costs billions of dollars to run — being made available to consumers for free. Adding ads to AI might be essential for its long-term sustainability, and GPT-5 might’ve shown the way by routing different queries to appropriate models.