The writing has unfortunately been on the wall for this, especially for free users. They want you to make choices that are in their economic interests.
The biggest tell for me lately is that if you ask ChatGPT about products or even specific items on Amazon, it will only return links to companies that partner with OpenAI. None of the companies they currently partner (affiliate link basically) with are ones I prefer to buy from. It has made ChatGPT way less useful for this kind of research now. I certainly have reasons to distrust all their shopping links.
Forget about blocking ChatGPT, they block search from users. I can't count the number of times I'd had to go back to search engine to find a specific product on Amazon because they don't surface the product with the exact name I'm looking for... Last one was Unite 7Second Detangler. They only returned sponsored products, but go to Google (site:amazon.com Unite 7Second Detangler)and search - boom within the first five spots (and way cheaper than the products shown in Amazon's search). Don't trust Amazon search people! Search Amazon from another search engine.
The biggest tell for me lately is that if you ask ChatGPT about products or even specific items on Amazon, it will only return links to companies that partner with OpenAI. None of the companies they currently partner (affiliate link basically) with are ones I prefer to buy from. It has made ChatGPT way less useful for this kind of research now. I certainly have reasons to distrust all their shopping links.