Can GPT-4 block ads better than humans? We put an AI-powered ad blocker to the test
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AI has been widely used in applications to streamline and improve their work — but what about ad blocking? We tested an AI-powered ad blocker and come to you with the results.

As usual with questions in title, the answer is no. But IMO it’s a flawed comparison because no-one is going around and picking sponsored segments by hand and disabling them. So compared to other automatic tool, I’d say it works fine.

Edit: I have been enlightened in the comments that indeed there are such projects.

  • @taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    26•11 months ago

    no-one is going around and picking sponsored segments by hand

    Pretty sure the block lists used by ad-blockers are still created by hand.

    • skeletorfw
      20•11 months ago

      Yeah, that is exactly how sponsorblock works: crowd-sourced manual identification of sponsor segments!

    • Max
      2•11 months ago

      TIL. That’s an interesting craft!

    • RQG
      2•11 months ago

      I’m using a sponsor skipper that is crowd sourced. Every user of the extension can flag an ad in a video.

  • auth
    7•11 months ago

    I don’t see any ads on the web and the filters were created by humans

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    7•11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    But beyond OpenAI’s own products, GPT-4 has been integrated into many applications and services, from learning and payment apps to Microsoft’s Bing AI and now ad blocking.

    The GPT-AdBlocker team describes the extension as “the ultimate all-in-one solution.” As far as its accuracy goes, they say it’s “very accurate” in detecting ads in videos but “some errors” may creep in.

    The same cannot be said about videos that feature multiple product placements throughout, which is very common with tutorials, where showing tools, whichever they are, is an inalienable part of the content.

    In our express analysis on YouTube’s potential ban on ad blockers, we mentioned that content creators are increasingly relying on brand deals, in addition to donations, to support their work.

    Granted, sponsored segments can be annoying, sketchy and feel too long — but they are still part of the content, so blocking them entirely raises an ethical issue.

    Moreover, while the integration of AI into ad blocking is promising, it’s possible that even with additional fine-tuning it won’t be a panacea for all ad-related challenges due to the intricacies of content creation.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!