[handfuloflight]

You: "Hey; I need a flight to London tomorrow; leaving at noon! Can you book it for me!"

AI: "Here are all available flights, economy class: 6am (£250), 12pm (£350), (Sponsored) 3pm (£300). The 12pm flight best matches your preference.

Sponsor offer: Save £50 by booking the 3pm flight through TravelDeals and get a free upgrade to business class.

Which would you prefer?"

In any case this is disingenuous, we're discussing LLM results augmented with advertising, not a fully sponsored agent which deliberately hides information. Today's LLMs pull comprehensive data anyway. You've strawmanned contextual advertising into outright fraud.

[withinboredom]

I was illustrating the point; not strawmanning you. In any case, AI does this kind of thing all the time and but usually by overcomplicating things and pretending like there isn’t something simpler or builtin unless you point it out.