On Wednesday, Anthropic announced that its AI chatbot, Claude, will remain freed from advertisements, drawing a pointy line between itself and rival OpenAI, which began testing ads in a low-cost tier of ChatGPT last month. The announcement comes alongside a Super Bowl ad campaign that mocks AI assistants that interrupt personal conversations with product pitches.
“There are a lot of good places for promoting. A conversation with Claude isn’t certainly one of them,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post. The corporate argued that including ads in AI conversations could be “incompatible” with what it wants Claude to be: “a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep pondering.”
The stance contrasts with OpenAI’s January announcement that it could begin testing banner ads totally free users and ChatGPT Go subscribers within the US. OpenAI said those ads would seem at the underside of responses and wouldn’t influence the chatbot’s actual answers. Paid subscribers on Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers is not going to see ads on ChatGPT.
Anthropic’s 2026 Super Bowl industrial.
“We wish Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests,” Anthropic wrote. “So we’ve made a alternative: Claude will remain ad-free. Our users won’t see ‘sponsored’ links adjoining to their conversations with Claude; nor will Claude’s responses be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements our users didn’t ask for.”
Competition between OpenAI and Anthropic has been fierce of late, as a result of the rise of AI coding agents. Claude Code, Anthropic’s coding tool, and OpenAI’s Codex have similar capabilities, but Claude Code has been widely popular amongst developers and is closing in on OpenAI’s turf. Last month, The Verge reported that many developers inside long-time OpenAI benefactor Microsoft have been adopting Claude Code, selecting Anthropic products over Microsoft’s Copilot, which is powered by tech that originated at OpenAI.
On this climate, Anthropic couldn’t resist taking a dig at OpenAI. In its Super Bowl industrial, we see a skinny man struggling to do a pull-up beside a buff fitness instructor, who’s a stand-in for an AI assistant. The person asks the “assistant” for help making a workout plan, however the assistant slips in an commercial for a complement, confusing the person. The industrial doesn’t name any names, and OpenAI has said it should not include ads in chat text itself, but Anthropic’s implications are clear.
