Anthropic, the AI startup behind chatbot Claude, has debuted its first ever Super Bowl ad, taking a jab at ChatGPT’s recent decision to introduce ads into its chats.
The spot portrays a personal trainer seemingly portraying OpenAI’s chatbot giving biased advice to a client due to ad interruptions. The ad closes with a … statement “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude”, underscoring Anthropic’s pledge to keep its Claude chatbot free of advertisements.
The campaign showcases Anthropic’s firm stance on OpenAI’s move towards monetisation, throwing a nuclear bomb into an already intense AI marketing war.
The release of the ad seemed to ruffle the feathers of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who in a post on X described the spot as “so clearly dishonest”.
“I guess it’s on-brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren’t real. As for our Super Bowl ad: it’s about builders, and how anyone can now build anything,” Altman added.
Following the release of the ad, Anthropic doubled down on its commitment to not introduce ads into its AI chatbot. In a post to its own website Anthropic wrote: “There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them.”
“Including ads in conversations with Claude would be incompatible with what we want Claude to be: a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.” it added.
The AI giants’ staunch refusal to launch ads in Claude raises questions about its ability to compete financially with rivals like OpenAI.
The addition of features like ad monetisation creates a major revenue stream for AI companies and could hinder Anthropics ability to maximise profits and thus rely heavily on other features like subscription models and enterprise deals.
