What does an OpenAI social network mean for social media and advertising?

OpenAI is building a social network? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

I spent years analyzing the social media industry at eMarketer, and I’ve seen platform plays come and go. But if Meta can get into the LLM business, it's completely obvious that OpenAI might want to get into the social media business.

(Note: this image is NOT real; it was generated based on a prompt to ChatGPT).

This is an AI-generated image; it’s not real.

Here’s why the idea of an OpenAI social network matters to social media companies, advertisers, investors and the creator community:

➡️ Data is the goal.
A social network would give OpenAI direct access to how humans express themselves — what they post, like, create, and remix -- using AI. That’s gold for training multimodal AI models and also for understanding how average people use and interact with AI.

➡️ It’s about the feedback loop.
Unlike scraping the open web, a social platform gives OpenAI direct feedback: Which images are liked? Which prompts get engagement?

➡️ It's about expanding monetization -- and not just with ads.
A few months ago I predicted that two companies -- Meta and OpenAI -- would launch ads in their AI experiences. Now that we know OpenAI is thinking about a social network, advertising is the most logical monetization angle. Commerce is another possibility. The kinds of things Perplexity is playing with are things that OpenAI could easily do—on a much bigger level.

There are big questions ahead: Can OpenAI navigate content moderation? Will users trust a platform where everything is also training the AI? If these sound familiar, just look at the social media landscape.

I've been saying for many months that AI experiences will be a major consumer phenomenon, and that AI platforms will become important destinations for advertising spending. What OpenAI is planning is confirmation.