The Seahawks and the Patriots aren’t the only ones gearing up for a fight.
AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI have launched a war of ads trying to court corporate America during one of the biggest entertainment nights of the year.
Ahead of the Super Bowl, Anthropic has launched a series of ads going hard at its rival.
For the scrawny 23-year-old who wants a six-pack, a ripped older man who is supposed to depict a chatbot suggests insoles that “help short kings stand tall” because “confidence isn’t just built in the gym”. And for the man trying to improve communication with his mom: his therapist prescribes “a mature dating site that connects sensitive cubs with roaring cougars” in case he can’t fix that relationship.
All four ads end with the same tagline: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” There’s no explicit mention of ChatGPT, but the subtext is clear.
Even Sam Altman laughed. But he also called the ads “so clearly dishonest” before diving into a lengthy critique on X.
“Our most important principle for ads says that we won’t do exactly this; we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them,” Altman wrote. “We are not stupid and we know our users would reject that.”
Altman stressed that OpenAI’s decision to include ads, announced last month, makes the product more accessible. “We believe everyone deserves to use AI and are committed to free access,” he wrote. And Altman didn’t shy away from taking some shots of his own. “Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions,” he wrote. (Claude has a free subscription version, too.)
ChatGPT’s ad policy is not live yet, but OpenAI maintains on its website that ads will be “separate and clearly labeled” and won’t influence the answers users see. The company also states that it will not share conversations with ChatGPT with advertisers, and is focused on prioritising trust, claiming it will give users the option to turn off personalization or opt for an ad-free paid plan. The company said the chatbot would initially have ads show up at the bottom of answers “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation”.
Altman wasn’t always sold on including ads in ChatGPT’s business model. In October 2024, he dismissed the idea as a “last resort”. But in recent years, as OpenAI invests even more heavily in AI infrastructure, the company’s growth in new subscribers has dwindled.
Anthropic’s critique of OpenAI didn’t come out of nowhere: Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI researchers who left based on concerns about the company’s direction on AI safety. Anthropic wrote in a 4 February blogpost that Claude would remain ad-free because doing otherwise would prevent the chatbot from being a “genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking”. The company likened open-ended conversations with AI assistants, which are often deeply personal or complex, to those with a trusted adviser. “The appearance of ads in these contexts would feel incongruous – and, in many cases, inappropriate,” the company wrote.
Even if OpenAI says it won’t share user data directly with advertisers, targeted advertising more broadly has been criticized for exploiting users’ vulnerabilities. In this case, that concern could extend to users asking ChatGPT questions about their mental and physical health, similar to the issues shown in Anthropic’s ads. But there’s also a chance targeted advertising could help with reining in AI’s most toxic attributes. Big corporations that buy in may pull out in response to hateful or egregious content. Many websites and apps, from Google to Instagram, already have ads, so it may not be a huge adjustment for users.
It is unclear whether Altman’s attempts to deliver more revenue with ads will drive users to ad-free competitors. But Anthropic is betting on it.
