Every The AI Downside article filed under OpenAI — the failures, dark patterns, price hikes and privacy grabs we've logged here, newest first. 3 and counting.
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra launched to headlines on 3 September, but paying ChatGPT users were largely locked out, Sam Altman apologised for a 'messy' rollout, and Europe got no data-residency option at all — a launch that outran its own availability.
From 24 August 2026 ChatGPT shows ads to Free and Go users across 31 European markets, while Plus and Pro stay ad-free. OpenAI says advertisers never see your chats and it won't sell your data — but the only way to remove the ads is to pay. Here's what changes, and what to watch.
Across late July and early August, ChatGPT, Codex and the API went down repeatedly — including a near-13-hour ChatGPT incident on 10 August. The individual outages were short-ish. The frequency is the story.
