Absolutely, would be insane if they didn't monetize free tier with ads.

And this is a good progression. Google search results were just turning to garbage. Facebook was just a slurry of noise.

ChatGPT is actually helpful and useful.

Google abused their users and customers with intentionally useless results. The more useless the results are the more time users would spend coming back again to search, and the more need there is for businesses to buy ads just to be seen.