> If folks corrupt the integrity of LLM responses, as it were, they’ll destroy the value proposition.

Highly unlikely. Google's SERP is an ad-infested abomination that sometimes shows useful results, and yet people still use Google Search.

The same will happen with LLMs, except in far more subtle and insidious ways. Instead of showing you ads directly, they will be naturally interwoven in conversations, suggestions, and generated content. You won't be able to tell whether the content is genuine or promoted, as is common on the web today.

The ads will target you more accurately than ever before based on not just the data you've given them, but on the context of the conversation, your surroundings, and any other piece of real-time information they can use to secure a conversion, or to influence your thoughts on a particular matter. You will trust it more than any current ad channel since the AI will be personal, and the tone will be friendly.

As with the web, ad-free services will exist, but the only way to escape this entirely will be to use local and self-hosted models.

> Google's SERP is an ad-infested abomination that sometimes shows useful results, and yet people still use Google Search.

I've personally stopped doing that. I understand it's not a mainstream decision since most people don't even know what alternatives are there, but doesn't mean that in a couple of years google won't start to feel it.

OTOH with the help of local models you should be able to post process any and all content on device to at least highlight, desensationalize if not outright remove quite a lot of those ads, at least until DRM folks lay their hands on it.

>yet people still use Google Search

Google search is widely acknowledged as drastically drying up in the last year or so, that's despite more worldwide internet usage.