人工智能聊天机器人正迈向植入广告与在线购物的未来。
内容总结：
【AI巨头加速商业化转型：聊天机器人将迎广告与购物浪潮】
随着人工智能研发成本持续飙升，全球科技企业正加速探索商业化路径。继Meta、OpenAI等头部公司投入数百亿美元构建AI基础设施后，免费聊天机器人服务即将迎来广告与电商的全面渗透。
巨额投入催生变现压力
Meta公司去年斥资370亿美元建设AI数据中心后，预计2025年相关支出将增至700亿美元。尽管与微软等云服务商不同，Meta的AI建设完全服务于自有生态，但持续投入已对其财务状况产生明显影响：今年第二季度出现上市以来首次债务超过现金储备的情况，上半年自由现金流同比下滑16%。
商业化路径逐渐清晰
Meta首席执行官扎克伯格在财报会议上明确表示，其AI产品将延续"先扩张规模后实现盈利"的经典模式。目前Meta AI月活用户已突破10亿，公司近期宣布将利用AI对话数据优化社交媒体广告投放，聊天界面内嵌广告亦呼之欲出。
OpenAI则通过电商合作抢占先机。在与支付平台Stripe合作后，ChatGPT用户已能直接通过聊天界面完成Etsy平台购物，接下来还将接入数百万家Shopify店铺。值得注意的是，OpenAI五月任命前Meta高管菲吉·西莫担任应用业务CEO，这位深谙广告与电商之道的管理者被业界视为其商业化转型的关键信号。
隐私与盈利的平衡挑战
当前每周使用ChatGPT的7亿用户中，绝大多数仍使用免费版本。在用户向AI助手分享越来越多个人信息的同时，如何平衡数据利用与隐私保护，将成为企业商业化道路上的重要课题。
观察人士指出，AI产业正重演互联网时代的发展轨迹：资本驱动扩张→免费服务获客→引入广告电商→最终实现盈利。但不同于传统互联网企业，AI公司面临的千亿级基础设施投入可能延长其实现盈利的周期。这场由技术革命引领的商业化浪潮，即将深刻重塑用户与AI的互动方式。
中文翻译：
人工智能聊天机器人正迈向嵌入广告与在线购物的未来
随着AI研发成本持续攀升，Meta、OpenAI等企业不得不加速商业化进程。用户需做好在聊天对话中看到广告的准备。
当人工智能的研发成本攀升至令人瞠目的高度，科技公司开始从ChatGPT等免费消费者应用中寻找盈利途径。这些AI服务虽属新兴领域，其商业化模式却延续了Web 2.0时代的核心路径：广告与电子商务。
去年投入370亿美元建设AI数据中心后，Facebook和Instagram的母公司Meta Platforms预计2025年将耗资约700亿美元，且未来数年投入将持续增加。即便资本支出如此庞大，算力需求仍显不足——本周Meta与CoreWeave签署了价值140亿美元、持续至2031年的云服务合约。
与亚马逊、微软和Alphabet通过云服务出租AI服务器不同，Meta的基础设施完全自用。没有云服务客户带来的收入来抵消巨额资本开支。
这直接反映在财务报表上：第二季度Meta的债务与租赁负债首次超过现金及短期投资。上半年自由现金流（经营现金流减去资本支出）较2024年同期下降16%。
尽管暂无财务危机，但AI开支已形成压力。投资者迫切想知道回报周期。首席执行官扎克伯格深谙此道，在四月财报会议上用大量篇幅阐述AI投资的价值回报。
他提及对标ChatGPT的Meta AI产品，强调将沿用经典商业化路径："先打造产品规模，再聚焦盈利。未来一年重点仍是扩大用户规模与参与度。"七月财报会他再度重申此战略。
对Meta而言，盈利始终意味着广告。其社交平台Threads便是明证：2023年7月上线后，至2025年1月月活突破3亿，随即启动广告植入。如今Meta AI月活用户已超10亿，本周公司宣布将利用AI对话数据优化社交媒体广告定位。AI聊天界面直接嵌入广告亦指日可待。
此举需谨慎平衡——用户向聊天机器人分享的个人数据正日益增多。
在聊天机器人广告化进程中，OpenAI可能后来居上。这家由投资者注资的企业承诺未来投入数千亿美元，必须证明其盈利潜力。虽然ChatGPT付费订阅增长迅猛，但每周7亿用户中绝大多数仍使用免费版，收入难以覆盖持续膨胀的运营成本。
五月，OpenAI增设应用业务首席执行官一职，由前Meta高管费吉·西莫出任。西莫不仅曾执掌Facebook应用，还带领生鲜配送平台Instacart完成上市，现任Instacart董事会主席兼Shopify董事。这位深谙广告与电商之道的管理者加盟，预示着OpenAI正转向广告与电商驱动的免费服务模式。
商业化尝试已初现端倪：本周OpenAI与支付服务商Stripe合作，推出"即时结账"功能，用户可在ChatGPT界面直接完成Etsy商品交易。下一步将接入Shopify数百万商户。当电商生态建成，广告投放自然接踵而至。
经历过谷歌、Facebook等Web 2.0平台崛起的人们对此模式不会陌生：资本先行培育免费服务，用户规模成型后开启商业化，最终形成用户、广告商与平台的三方绑定。AI领域将重演这一轨迹，唯一区别在于：由于前期投入高达数千亿美元，股东回报可能需要更长时间。
本文作者联系方式：adam.levine@barrons.com
英文来源：
AI chatbots move toward a future with advertising and online shopping
As AI expenditures mount, Meta, OpenAI, and other AI firms have little choice but to expand their monetization efforts. Get ready for ads in your chatbots.
As the costs for artificial intelligence mount to eye-watering levels, companies are starting to look for ways to pull revenue from free consumer apps like ChatGPT. These AI services may be new, but the monetization playbook goes back to Web 2.0: Advertising and e-commerce
After spending $37 billion building out AI data centers last year, Facebook and Instagram maker Meta Platforms expects to spend around $70 billion in 2025, with more in the coming years. Even with all that capital spending, it still will need more computing power, this week signing a $14 billion cloud contract with CoreWeave that goes through 2031.
Unlike Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Alphabet, which rent out their AI servers in the cloud, Meta’s buildout is all for its own use. There are no sales to cloud customers to offset its capital expenditures.
Meta’s balance sheet and cash-flow statement are shifting as a result. In the second quarter, Meta had more debt and lease liabilities than cash and short-term investments for the first time as a public company. Free cash flow—operational cash flow minus capex—was down 16% from 2024 in the first half of the year.
Meta is hardly in any real financial risk, but all the AI spending is starting to bite, and investors want to know when they will see a return. CEO Mark Zuckerberg can read the room as well as anyone, and in the first-quarter earnings call in April, he devoted the bulk of his scripted presentation to laying out what Meta stands to gain from all its investment.
He talked about Meta AI, its ChatGPT competitor, and how it will follow Meta’s usual path to monetization. “First, we build and scale the product, and then once it is at scale, then we focus on revenue," he said. “But I expect that we’re going to be largely focused on scaling and deepening engagement for at least the next year before we’ll really be ready to start building out the business here." Zuckerberg returned to this theme in the second-quarter earnings call in July.
For Meta, revenue has always meant ads. Most recently we’ve seen this path with Meta’s X competitor, Threads, which launched in July 2023. By January 2025, Threads had over 300 million monthly users, and Meta began inserting ads.
Now it has that kind of scale for Meta AI, which has at least one billion monthly users. This week Meta announced that it would begin to use their AI chats to better target ads in the company’s social media apps. Ads in AI chats themselves may not be far off.
All of this is delicate, given the increasingly personal data users have begun to share with chatbots.
It’s possible that ChatGPT maker OpenAI actually beats Meta in crossing the chatbot-advertising Rubicon. OpenAI is still investor funded, and it has committed to future obligations that add up to hundreds of billions of dollars. It needs to show how it intends to eventually become profitable.
While Meta can lean on substantial cash flows from Facebook and Instagram, OpenAI’s subscription and user-based revenue are growing quickly but they can’t cover ChatGPT’s mounting expenses, especially since the vast majority of ChatGPT’s 700 million weekly users continue to use a free version of the app.
In May, OpenAI hired Fidji Simo for a newly created role, CEO of Applications, reporting to CEO Sam Altman. Simo rose through the ranks at Meta to eventually run the Facebook app. She then became CEO of Instacart, overseeing the delivery firm’s initial public offering. She still chairs Instacart’s board and sits on the boards of Shopify and OpenAI.
Simo is an executive with deep understanding of advertising and e-commerce. The company declined to answer questions about her new role or to make Simo available for comment, but she is the exact kind of person a company would hire as it pivots to a free service backed by advertising and e-commerce.
We saw OpenAI’s first steps in that monetization journey this past week. In partnership with payment processor Stripe, ChatGPT users can now look for and buy items from Etsy, without ever leaving the chatbot, through a shopping experience ChatGPT calls Instant Checkout.
Millions of Shopify stores will be next to join ChatGPT’s e-commerce platform. Once e-commerce shows up, advertising isn’t far behind, with sellers looking to get attention.
All of this will feel familiar to anyone that lived through the rise of Web 2.0 sites like Google and Facebook. At first, investors funded the search and social-media sites, allowing the free services to grow by leaps and bounds with users. Once the monetization switch gets turned on, the companies refocused their efforts on advertisers and sellers. Eventually, users and advertisers are all hooked on the platform, and the companies turn their attention to pleasing shareholders.
Expect a similar pattern for AI, with one key difference: The shareholder payoff could take time, with initial profits wiped out by hundreds of billions in spending.
Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com