GPT-AdBlocker for Chrome promises to block all ads, including ads in videos
It was only a matter of time before a developer would come up with an idea to use AI tools for content blocking on the Internet.
GPT-AdBlocker is a free browser extension for Google Chrome that uses AI to block advertisement. The developers promise that it blocks all ads, including ads that are shown in videos. The extension works in other Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera or Vivaldi as well.
The extension was launched back in April 2023 and was listed on Producthunt at the time. The developers state that it was built "upon the solid foundation of Ublock" and that it uses "advanced artificial intelligence technology to block out all types of ads". Also, it is based on Manifest V3 already, which means that it is future-proof.
The creators of GPT-AdBlocker have published a short demo video on YouTube.
A look at the privacy practices on the Chrome Web Store shows that the developers have disclosed that they don't collect or use user data.
Update: the linked privacy policy states that the developer is collecting data, including usage data when using the service.
Up until now, projects such as Sponsorblock were all YouTube users had to skip sponsored content in videos. These rely on manually adding timestamps of sponsored blocks in videos. The popularity of Sponsorblock makes it a good option for many popular channels and videos, but it is not a full solution because of its manual approach to the blocking.
GPT-AdBlocker attempts to address this by automating the skipping of sponsored parts in videos with the help of AI. The feature works automatically once installed and a quick test confirmed that it did indeed detect sponsored parts in videos and skipped them.
The skipping is not as perfect as the manual approach. Sometimes, you'd watch a few seconds in the beginning, at other times, you'd watch a few seconds at the end. It also happened that seconds of the regular video content were cut as well by the extension.
The developers of AdGuard came to similar conclusions when they took GTP-AdBlocker to the test. They concluded that "it leaves “leftovers” of sponsored ads" sometimes, and "cuts the video rather crudely" at other times.
The technology itself is interesting, however, and there is certainly room for improvement, especially when it comes to accuracy.
Improved content blockers will likely be developed in the coming years and these may provide better results. For now, the good old skipping ahead option, using Sponsorblock, or supporting the channel by watching the sponsored part of the video should work for most users.
Now You: using AI for content blocking, what is your take on this?
I think we’ll have to wait and see what Mozilla does with this. At the moment Web Bundles seem to be confined to Google Chrome browsers and therefore Firefox users aren’t affected.
As a privacy orientated organization Mozilla is unlikely to jump on the Google bandwagon since doing so would mean Firefox would lose its appeal. If anything, users who become dissatisfied with GC may well switch to Firefox or one of its forks thereby increasing Mozilla’s market share.
only a matter of time before it starts hallucinating..
I don’t see how this could be any better than sponsor block considering it is basically machine learning so what is that going to do?? It’s going to monitor what users do during when the ad segment pops up which will be to naturally go hmm I don’t wanna here this and then look for the end of it and jump ahead manually so what does this usually mean? Well that means that you will always get a situation when the segment will skip late and the end point will not be accurate either. They could artificially write a rule to roll it back a slight bit on the start point and roll forward on the end point but it will still not be great.
Sponsor block is vastly better and likely always will be. The only way this type of logic could be helpful is if it pre scans media and then highlights it so you can then make your manual edits on videos. This is the only way I could see it as helpful in that regard.
When it comes to adblocking it is much the same issue. Inaccurate and always going to require manual override.
The privacy policy speaks for itself. I guess I will just go about things on the internet the old fashion way by continuing to rub two sticks together without “AI” :P
Obviously, Sponsorblock relies on manual tags that are set up manually by live people.
It doesn’t work on a recent video where no one has had a time to tag it yet.
Subj. does it on the fly, which means it can “cut out ads” even in videos that have just been posted or are simply unpopular (where no one has ever tagged them).
It detects these parts automatically, apparently, and does not require prior use data.
I understand but I imagine that it could only do this by learning peoples behaviour where they skip and such. I also could assume that it is done based on unusual breaks in the video such as variations such as volumes, sets/environment, lighting, volume etc but that is a huge leap in assumptions.
I understand the premise (similar to butter I guess) but not sure how efficient and accurate the execution will be. At best I have a feeling the videos could never be as accurate as Sponsor block segment skips unless they then allow you to manually edit/fix it and submit it too. As someone that has spent a generous amount of time to submit very accurate skips for various videos that also allow the videos to flow seamlessly I doubt this could do any better but I will have to wait and see.
Maybe someone could make a video and then in between without many changes or anything as you are talking and then start speaking about some sort of made up product you are selling to make money on as a side-hustle. I doubt it would pick it up unless it is nudged to do so manually or by the methods I suggested in that it will analyze the viewer behaviour.
I’m just curious.
There would have to be some sort of backend database to allow it to not have to continuously attempt to find these parts which begs the question will there be some sort of analysis being done as it preloads the video stream ahead of the viewer.
I can’t really test it myself and based on it’s dubious TOS I probably wouldn’t want to but it is interesting from a technical standpoint for me to think about.
I like cake.
Not sure what happened to my other comment.
Ghacks is wrong when they say “A look at the privacy practices on the Chrome Web Store shows that the developers have disclosed that they don’t collect or use user data.”
Their privacy policy clearly says that they will not only collect your data (a lot of it too), but they share it with “business partners” aka any other company they choose to do business with.
Where Ghacks went wrong (hopefully) is that they just read what was on the Chrome extension page instead of clicking the privacy policy. Google doesn’t seemingly regulate that extension page as long as the policy is linked, and many developers will straight up lie and then link a policy that says the real truth.
Tony, your other comment [#4570428] most likely got delayed because it had a live hyperlink within it, which had to be further examined to make sure it wasn’t spam, etc.
Like most of these systems, its purpose is for collecting personally identifiable information, and brokering the data (usually for commercial purposes).
Makes sense, and that was what I sort of suspected afterward. Thanks!
Tony, thank you for your input. I have updated the article to add the information.
Martin–If you call that an update, then there is a wide gap between my perceived responsibilities of a tech blogger to fully inform his/her audience and my expectations for the blog’s readers to implicitly trust they are being told, as completely as possible, the truth. The need to “fact check” gHacks articles . . . .
@Tony–Yes, I thinking Martin must be getting quite lazy in his old age to miss the Privacy Policy practices of GPT-AdBlocker [aka https://www.pureblock.app/#0%5D.
Sort of blows me away to read Martin’s, “A look at the privacy practices on the Chrome Web Store shows that the developers have disclosed that they don’t collect or use user data.”
Flip! Didn’t read the policy–what happened to the site? Always have to triple check every article with other tech sites. Pathetic.
Read:
https://www.camb.ai/privacy-policy
Basically this is spyware and adware in one.
I understand that by using AI, it will need to send some data to the author in order to do the AI processing, however, they go a step above. No way would I put that on my device.
Their privacy policy is here: https://www.camb.ai/privacy-policy
Some critical highlights:
“Usage Data is collected automatically when using the Service.
Usage Data may include information such as Your Device’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that You visit, the time and date of Your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
When You access the Service by or through a mobile device, We may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile device You use, Your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of Your mobile device, Your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser You use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
We may also collect information that Your browser sends whenever You visit our Service or when You access the Service by or through a mobile device.”
Also:
“We may share Your personal information in the following situations:
With Service Providers: We may share Your personal information with Service Providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Service, to contact You.
For business transfers: We may share or transfer Your personal information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of Company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of Our business to another company.
With Affiliates: We may share Your information with Our affiliates, in which case we will require those affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy. Affiliates include Our parent company and any other subsidiaries, joint venture partners or other companies that We control or that are under common control with Us.
With business partners: We may share Your information with Our business partners to offer You certain products, services or promotions.
With other users: when You share personal information or otherwise interact in the public areas with other users, such information may be viewed by all users and may be publicly distributed outside.
With Your consent: We may disclose Your personal information for any other purpose with Your consent.”
To answer the actual question, as no one else has so far as I can see,
IT SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF ME!
M$, Google, Meta are already bad enough now the freaking real life HAL 9000 is going to start tracking everything I do and manipulating the information I recieve?
it’s optional, it’s something YOU have to go out and download yourself.
There’s already AI image sharpening/upscaling features built into browsers to make “images on the web” look better, it was also covered on ghacks – I didn’t see you writing about how scared you are of that, despite it being the same thing “manipulating the info you receive”.
Calm down lol
Ublock Origin is still the king of Ad-blockers. It would be necessary at least five years to be defeated.
@John G.
uBlock Origin’s approach will not suffice once Google makes Web Bundles the standard for websites, then you will need AI that recognizes ad elements in the page.
@Iron Heart, then we should expect some kind of IA for Ublock Origin too! :[
I use ‘Piped’ (and occasionally ‘Invidious’) Youtube frontend instances and therefor never encounter ads and tracking, sometimes problematic displays, rendering on Youtube’ very pages. Not to mention the account PITN.
No tracking, no ads, no in-video ads with ‘Piped’.
Piped at GitHub says it all and what it says is true [https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped] :
User Features
No Ads
No Tracking
Lightweight on server and client
Infinite Scrolling
Light/Dark themes
Login
Feeds
Playlists
Integration with SponsorBlock
Integration with LBRY for streaming
Integration with Return YouTube Dislike via RYD-Proxy
4K support
No connections to Google’s servers
Playing just audio
PWA support
Locally saved Preferences
Available in many languages, thanks to our translators
Embedded video support
No age restriction
Bypasses Geo restrictions if possible through a federated network
Technical Features
Multi-region load-balancing
Performant by design, designed to handle 1000s of users concurrently
Does not use official YouTube APIs
Uses NewPipeExtractor to extract information
Public JSON API
Federated protocol on Matrix to let instances collaborate with each other
—————————————————————————————————
It just works. The video in this very article was rendered via a Piped instance, no connections to youtube, not even to youtube-nocookie. The embedded video here was redirected to my chosen Piped instance (still embedded here), et voila.
Tom dude you missed the point, are you not aware of what “in-video” adverts are? They are not added by youtube during streaming, they are added by the video maker upon rendering, they’re baked into the video itself. That is what this extension focuses on dealing with.
Rest assured you are getting all the “in-video adverts” with piped or whatever else, as these services just give you the unedited video.
@bruh, ‘Piped handles YouTube in-video and more. All ‘Piped instances’ have a ‘Preferences’ page with several check-boxes s among which :
Enable Sponsorblock
Skip Sponsors
Skip Intermission/Intro Animation
Skip Endcards/Credits
Skip Preview/Recap
Skip Interaction Reminder (Subscribe)
Skip Unpaid/Self Promotion
Skip Music: Non-Music Section
Skip Highlight
Skip Filler Tangent
—
No ads there, no in-video ads, no tracking.
Wouldn’t give up adblockers or shields Martin :) Without the “Standard adblock mode” it doesn’t block anything out side of some very specific video sites. Probably a better replacement of Sponsorblock ext than anything else.
As far as Automated sponsor blocking this has already been around for chrome. It’s called Butter. (not the same as the one found on the extension store which is completely different)
https://butter.sonnet.io/
I have not tested this myself but its also available on Github too.