Sam Altman slams Anthropic’s AI ad campaign, says its “clearly dishonest”

On February 4, Anthropic announced that its Claude assistant will remain free from ads. With the announcement, the company released a series of ad campaigns, among which the Super Bowl ad titled “A Time and a Place” caught OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s eyes. 

In an X (formerly Twitter) post, Sam Altman mocks the ad, saying that they are “clearly dishonest.”

Altman said, “We would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them. We are not stupid, and we know our users would reject that.” This may assure ChatGPT’s user base that the chatbot may not influence a chat as depicted in Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad.

Although Anthropic's ad campaign does not mention OpenAI or ChatGPT by name, it clearly positions Claude as an alternative. Anthropic will continue to provide a clean experience and will fund through enterprise contracts and paid tiers. In contrast, OpenAI has confirmed that it is testing ads for free and Go tier users, marking a major shift in the user experience

Altman, in the post, states that ads are the price of keeping ChatGPT free for most people. He said that ChatGPT has a huge demand, and serving that many people is expensive.

However, as Claude will remain free from ads, it may start to attract more users. Anthropic says, “Our users won’t see ‘sponsored’ links adjacent to their conversations with Claude; nor will Claude’s responses be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements our users did not ask for.”

The AI startup not only rivals OpenAI, but it also creates a huge fear among the software industry. Anthropic’s new AI automation tools have become a buzzword in the industry and have already started to affect the IT stock market globally.

Now the "AI Ad Wars" have given the competition a new interface reality, where users will decide if they prefer ads or a free assistant.