We have seen big corporate rivalries in products across the gamut. Mac and Windows went at it for long. Then it was Pepsi and Coca-Cola, Burger King and McDonald’s, BMW and Mercedes, and the list goes on. But it is the era of AI, and it was only a matter of time before the competitiveness spilt onto the AI scene. And lo and behold, Anthropic has fired shots at OpenAI for its recent policy change of showing ads to its users. And the entire debacle has the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, furious.
The to and fro began for ads, by ads, and has now sparked a debate on the internet on who is right. Is it Anthropic and its product Claude, which promises never to show ads to users, or is it the industry behemoth OpenAI and its product ChatGPT, that does not want Anthropic governing the business model of others? Read on, and decide for yourself.
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Anthropic vs OpenAI: What Happened?
On Wednesday, Anthropic came out with a set of 4 comic advertisements as part of a new “A Time and a Place” campaign. The ads highlight the use of advertisements within user conversations with AI. The ads titled “Betrayal,” “Treachery,” “Violation,” and “Deception” are comic takes on ads being plugged within genuine AI conversations about relationships, fitness, learning, and professional growth. Two of these ads will run before and during Super Bowl 60, scheduled for February 8.
Check out the Claude ads below
The internet has had a field day ever since the launch of these ads. Not because they are so funny, which they are. The fact is that the campaign comes just a week after OpenAI’s announcement that it will begin beta testing ads for its free-tier users, as well as those on the ChatGPT Go plan. So, clearly, the ads are a jibe at OpenAI’s revised ad policy, and position Claude as a platform that will “never show ads.”
Claude’s “Anti-Black-Box AI” Stance
Right at the time of the ads, Claude came out with an entire blog explaining its “no-ad policy” in detail. Titled “Claude is a space to think,” the blog makes Claude’s stance crystal clear – advertising changes incentives. It mentions that once ads enter the picture, the system is no longer optimized purely for helping users. Instead, it runs the risk of prioritising monetisation on any particular topic.
Anthropic frames this as a design and ethics choice, not a pricing one.
In the blog, Anthropic argues that AI conversations are fundamentally different from social media feeds or search results. When users interact with Claude, they are often thinking out loud, asking vulnerable questions, learning new skills, or reasoning through complex personal and professional problems. Injecting ads into that space, according to Anthropic, breaks trust and disrupts cognition.
So, when the comic ads came onto the scene, they weren’t just a one-off joke. They were Anthropic’s well-aimed shot at the AI-giant that is OpenAI, saying – that is definitely not the direction we (the AI space in totality) are headed to.
All good points, in good humour, but one person did not take it very well.
Sam Altman goes on a Rant
Well, you can’t say anything to the child and not expect the dad to step up. With Anthropic’s dig at Sam Altman’s brainchild, the OpenAI CEO had a scathing response to share. Just one thing even he couldn’t deny –
“the ads were funny”
But that is where the appreciation ended. Altman went on to call the campaign “clearly dishonest,” arguing that Anthropic deliberately misrepresented how ads would ever appear inside ChatGPT.
According to Altman, OpenAI has a clear internal rule: ads will never interrupt or manipulate user conversations in the way depicted by Claude’s campaign. So that basically means, Anthropic was criticising a hypothetical scenario that does not exist.
Altman then shifted the debate from ads to access. He argued that OpenAI’s biggest challenge is scale, not monetisation. By his own claim, “more people in Texas alone use ChatGPT for free than the total number of Claude users across the US.” From OpenAI’s perspective, ads are a way to keep AI accessible to billions who cannot afford subscriptions, while still offering ad-free experiences to paying users.
His real attacks, however, start late into the tweet, where he blasts off Anthropic’s broader philosophy. Altman calls the company “authoritarian,” wanting to “control what people do with AI,” who gets access, and even which companies are allowed to build on top of it.
Altman then wraps up with a mention of OpenAI’s direction for the future. He promises wider access, falling prices, and an ecosystem built around builders rather than gatekeepers.
Not in good humour anymore. These are direct, angry shots.
The Bigger Picture of AI
If I am to weigh my two cents here, Anthropic has raised very valid concerns here. BUT (and this is a big one here) none that we haven’t faced before. After all, the content you consume all day across your social media feeds is now shamelessly monetised. With AI showing the ads now, just expect the level of personalisation and subtlety of ad plugins to be much more nuanced and directed. Although Anthropic mentions that these are different scenarios, it fails to depict the reality of the world we live in – ads are just about everywhere – not just social media, but websites, videos, games, and even professional tools that we use for free.
Having said that, its ads were a fun dig to raise a serious issue that will (if not already) plague the AI world in the time to come. Sam Altman, with his scathing response, has seemingly taken it to a whole new level, straight-up highlighting (not just questioning) one of its most noteworthy competitors’ intentions and practices. Now, who wins in this Anthropic vs OpenAI beef of AI transparency and ethics, only time will tell. For now, simply watch the Claude ads and enjoy a whole new era of AI. Because even Sam Altman couldn’t ignore them.
