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Welcome Automaters 👋
The moment we've all been dreading just arrived: OpenAI announced that ChatGPT is getting targeted ads.
Starting in the next few weeks, if you’re a Free or ChatGPT Go ($8/mo) user in the U.S., you’ll start seeing "Sponsored" carousels popping up at the bottom of your answers.
How it works: Context is everything: Ask for vacation spots? Boom, hotel ads. Looking for a new mascara? Here come the beauty brand carousels.
The Guardrails: OpenAI swears the ads won't mess with the actual AI answers, and they promise they’ll never sell your chat history to advertisers.
The Safety: No ads for anyone under 18, and "sensitive" topics like health, mental health, and politics are strictly ad-free zones.
Also, you can dismiss the ads, see exactly why you’re being shown a specific one, and straight-up turn off personalization, which if you ask me, basically ruins the whole “targeted ads” thing.
Why the cash grab? OpenAI is currently burning through cash like a wildfire. They’ve committed to spending a staggering $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure over the next eight years (including flagship projects like the $500B "Stargate" data center). With 800 million weekly users hitting their servers, and since they don’t expect to be profitable anytime soon, those GPU bills aren't going to pay themselves.
So if you aren't ready to see a protein powder ad while you're trying to debug your code, here are your options:
Pay Up: Plus ($20/mo), Pro ($200/mo), Business and Enterprise users stay ad-free... for now.
Jump Ship:
Claude (Anthropic): Still 100% ad-free and known for those "thoughtful" “human-like” vibes.
Google Gemini: Their free tier is still ad-free (though with Google’s history, who knows for how long).
Perplexity AI: Great for research and cites its sources, still clean of ads.
Qwen (Alibaba): The dark horse no one’s talking about enough. It’s basically running the open-source game, and if you self-host it, ads are gone for good. The wild part? Its free models are straight-up destroying benchmarks, all while staying fully ad-free.
The Bottom Line: The "Free AI Party" just got a little less free. OpenAI is betting that you'll tolerate a few ads rather than switch platforms. Are they right? We’re about to find out.
Here's what we have for you today
🛡️ Top 5 Privacy-First Alternatives to ChatGPT In 2026
Okay y’all, it’s officially-official: ChatGPT is getting ads. And the timing literally couldn’t be more perfect because a whole new breed of "privacy-first" AI is hitting the scene, and honestly? They make the big players look a little… creepy.
So Wait, what is "Privacy-First" AI?
Think of most chatbots like a conversation in a crowded coffee shop where the owner is recording you and the barista is taking notes for advertisers. Meanwhile, Privacy-first AI is like having that same conversation in a soundproof booth where only you and the AI can hear each other—and even the company that built the booth can't listen in.
The key difference? End-to-end encryption (E2EE), the same tech that makes Signal and WhatsApp messages unreadable to everyone except you and your recipient.
Here’s How This Actually Works:
The Lock: Your message is encrypted on your device (using your Face ID or PIN) before it ever hits the internet.
The Bubble: It travels as scrambled gibberish to a "secure bubble" in the cloud where even the company’s engineers can’t peek.
The Self-Destruct: The AI processes your request inside that bubble, sends the encrypted answer back, and the session vanishes. No traces, no training, no targeting.
Who’s actually building this?
There are five main players you should have on your radar right now:
Confer (The "Signal" of AI): Launched by Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike in late 2025. This is the hardcore option. It uses passkeys instead of passwords and runs everything in "confidential computing" enclaves. The Catch: It’s $35/month for the Pro version (though there’s a 20-msg/day free tier).
Proton Lumo: From the legends at ProtonMail. They use open-source models (Mistral, OLMO 2) and host everything on European servers away from U.S. snooping. The Edge: It has a new "Projects" feature—an encrypted workspace for your files that Lumo can access without "learning" your secrets.
Brave Leo: Built right into the Brave browser. It doesn't record chats, share data, or even require an account for basic use.
Local AI (Ollama / LM Studio): The ultimate flex. If your laptop has the muscle, you can run models like Llama 3 or Qwen locally. This ensures 0% data leaves your device, 0% ads, and 100% privacy.
Why should you care?
Let’s be real: AI has become our digital therapist. We share work secrets, health scares, and weird creative ideas. Moxie Marlinspike calls AI "technology that actively invites confession." And that's not all:
Right now, those confessions live in a database. Last year, we saw ChatGPT logs get subpoenaed by courts and accidentally leaked in Google search results. And with ads coming, the incentive to "profile" you is only going up.
The Bottom Line:
Privacy costs money. ChatGPT is "cheap" because your data is part of the product. But Privacy-first bots charge a premium because you are the customer, not the data source.
So here’s the question: what's your privacy worth?
For casual use, maybe ChatGPT with ads is fine. But for sensitive conversations like work strategy, mental health, financial planning, or medical questions, privacy-first options are starting to look pretty smart.
In short, we're at a fork in the road. One path leads to powerful, convenient AI that knows everything about you and shows you ads. The other path costs more but treats your conversations like they're actually private. The choice is yours, but at least now you know what the alternatives look like.
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🧱 Around The AI Block
🙅♀️ China blocks Nvidia’s h200 AI chips cleared by the US.
🤑 Openai rolls out its low-cost Chatgpt plan globally
🧑💻 Google expands its Flow AI video tool to workspace users.
💰 Musk wants up to $134B in OpenAI lawsuit.
👨⚖️ California AG sends Musk’s xAI a cease-and-desist order over sexual deepfakes.
💼 AI raises average wages by 21% and substantially reduces' wage inequality, researchers find
🛠️ Trending Tools
For the Workflow Builders: Lately.ai – This isn't just a social scheduler; it’s a "repurposing" engine. It learns your brand’s specific "voice" and then automatically breaks down your long-form videos, podcasts, or blogs into months' worth of high-performing social media posts.
For the Audio Obsessed: LALAL.AI is the ultimate "stem splitter." If you need to remove vocals from a song, extract a specific instrument for a remix, or clean up "noisy" background audio from a voice memo, this tool uses next-gen AI to isolate sounds with surgical precision.
For the Research Ninjas: Consensus – Tired of "hallucinations"? This search engine only answers your questions using peer-reviewed scientific research. It searches through 200 million papers to give you evidence-based answers with direct citations, so you can stop guessing and start knowing.
For the Visual Architects: Gamma Wave 2 now uses agentic design to build entire websites, slide decks, and internal briefs from a single prompt. It doesn't just "make a slide"—it chooses the layouts and imagery that best fit your specific brand voice.
For the Multi-Taskers: Saner.AI is designed specifically for those of us with "too many tabs open" in our brains. Saner acts as a proactive daily planner that scans your scattered notes and emails to propose an optimal schedule, automatically turning your random thoughts into trackable tasks.
Hope these tools help you reclaim some of your time today!
🤖 AI Workout Of The Day: How to Create the Perfect Email Signature With AI
It’s 2026, and if your email signature is just three lines of plain text, you’re essentially leaving money on the table. Your digital autograph is now a prime piece of real estate for "Entity Authority" (remember that GEO talk?).
Well, your AI sidekick is officially ready to give you a digital autograph so slick it belongs on a movie poster. Whether you’re a Claude loyalist or a ChatGPT/Gemini power user, creating a unique signature is now about as easy as ordering a pizza.
Here’s the "Automated" guide to the two ways to play it.
Method 1: The "Lazy & Loving It" Way:
Best For: Freelancers and SMBs who want a high-end look in under 60 seconds.
The Tools: 2026 favorites include MySignature, paperform , Canva or HubSpot’s Signature generator.
The Workflow:
Prompt It: Tell the AI your name, title, and company. Add a vibe like "clean and minimalist" or "bold and creative." eg: "Create a minimalist signature for a Fintech CTO using royal blue accents, a circular headshot frame, and a trackable 'Book a Demo' button."
The Edge: Many of these now feature "Draw-to-Design." You can literally scribble a rough layout with your mouse or alternatively, write your signature on paper, scan it, upload it and let the AI snap it into a pixel-perfect, mobile-responsive HTML grid.
Refine & Export: Tweak your brand colors, add your headshot, and export as a PNG (for that sweet, sweet transparency) or grab the HTML code.
Install: Head to your Gmail or Outlook settings, find the Signature settings, hit "Create New," and paste. Save. Done.
Method 2: The "Power User" LLM Customization
Want something 100% custom that no one else has? Use an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude to write the actual code for you.
The Prompt Strategy: Don't just ask for a signature. Get specific: "Write clean, mobile-responsive HTML for an email signature. Use a <table> layout for maximum compatibility. Include [Your Name], [Job Title], a LinkedIn link, a company logo on the left. and a CTA button with hex code #007bff. Ensure all styles are INLINE so they don't get stripped by Gmail."
The Loop:
Test it: Copy the code into a free HTML previewer.
Argue with the bot: If the logo is too big, tell the AI to fix it eg:"Make the logo 50px wide and center the text for mobile."
Deploy: Paste that refined HTML into your email client's signature box.
💡 Pro-Tips for a 2026 Signature
Before you hit "Save," run through this checklist to make sure you aren't "that person" with the messy footer:
Keep it Lean: Aim for 4-6 lines max. Stick to Name, Title, Company, Phone, Socials and ONE primary link. If it’s longer, it’s a biography, not a signature.
Web-Safe Only: Stick to fonts like Arial or Georgia. If you use a "cool" custom font, your recipient will probably just see a glitchy mess.
The "Light" Rule: Keep your images under 100KB. No one wants to wait 5 seconds for your headshot to load.
Dark Mode is Real: Test your signature in Dark Mode! If your logo has a white background box, it’s going to look like an amateur hour. (Pro tip: Use transparent PNGs).
Test On All Devices: Send a test email to your phone. If it looks like a jumbled puzzle on a small screen, go back to the AI and demand a "Mobile-Responsive" update.
Information Gain (Optional): Add a one-sentence "Information Gain" hook. Instead of just a website link, try: "See how we’re solving [Problem] in our latest 2026 report [Link]."
The Bottom Line: Your signature is the last thing people see before they decide whether to reply. Treat it like a billboard, not a footnote.
⚡️ Quick Tip of the Day: The "Agentic" Shift
In 2026, stop asking AI to "Write a draft." Instead, start asking it to "Propose a plan." When you give an AI the power to outline its own steps before it starts writing, the quality of the output jumps by nearly 40%. Let the AI be the architect, so you can be the final judge.
Here’s a Prompt you can try:
“Propose a clear, step-by-step plan to achieve the stated goal. Include objectives, key actions, timeline, required resources, potential risks, and success metrics. Keep it practical and easy to execute.”Is this your AI Workout of the Week (WoW)? Cast your vote!
That's all we've got for you today.
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