Sam Altman Calls Anthropic's Super Bowl AI Ads

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has criticised rival AI company Anthropic over its Super Bowl advertising campaign, calling the commercials “clearly dishonest,” while conceding that he found them amusing.

His remarks highlight growing tensions among leading players in the artificial intelligence industry as competition over users, revenue models, and public trust in AI intensifies.

Anthropic aired multiple ads during the Super Bowl, using humour to question the idea of advertising in AI products. The commercials suggest a future in which chatbots interrupt conversations with sponsored messages, positioning Anthropic’s chatbot Claude as an ad-free AI alternative. The campaign was widely seen as a pointed reference to OpenAI’s plans to introduce advertising on parts of ChatGPT.

• Sam Altman calls Anthropic’s Super Bowl AI ads misleading
• OpenAI CEO disputes claims about ads inside ChatGPT responses
• AI rivals clash over ethics and advertising models

Altman responded publicly on social media, stating that while the ads made him laugh, they misrepresented OpenAI’s ad strategy. He stressed that ads would not appear inside chatbot responses and would instead be clearly separated and labelled. According to Altman, portraying ChatGPT as injecting ads directly into conversations creates a misleading picture of how OpenAI intends to handle AI monetisation models.

The OpenAI chief also questioned Anthropic’s positioning in the market, noting that its products are largely targeted at higher-paying customers. He suggested that the company’s messaging reflects an attempt to frame itself as a moral authority on how AI businesses should operate, rather than an accurate depiction of competitors’ strategies in the generative AI market.

Anthropic has defended its campaign as a statement of values, emphasising that its chatbot Claude will remain free from advertising. The company argues that keeping AI tools ad-free helps preserve user trust in chatbots and avoids conflicts between commercial incentives and reliable outputs.

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The exchange underscores a broader debate within the AI industry competition landscape about sustainable revenue models, transparency, and ethics. As AI tools become more embedded in everyday life, how companies choose to monetise them is emerging as a defining issue in the next phase of competition.