Sam Altman Slams Anthropic Super Bowl Ads, Which Take Jabs at OpenAI’s Advertising Plans, as ‘Clearly Dishonest’
Anthropic has released a set of four ads as part of its 2026 Super Bowl marketing push that take a swing at artificial-intelligence rival OpenAI‘s push into advertising. The spots each carry the tagline, “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” referring to Anthropic’s AI chatbot.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, immediately lashed out about how his competitor positioned OpenAI’s move into advertising, accusing Anthropic of producing “deceptive” ads that are “clearly dishonest.”
OpenAI said last month that it will begin testing ads on the ChatGPT’s free and low-price subscription tier for users in the U.S. The company promised that user data and conversations will “never” be “sold to advertisers.”
One of the Anthropic ads — a version of which will air on NBC’s Super Bowl LX telecast — spoofs an OpenAI commercial that depicts a young man doing pull-ups in a park and uses ChatGPT to create a workout plan. In the Anthropic spot, the guy asks the AI agent, “Hey, can I get six-pack quickly?” The AI chatbot, clearly meant to be an ad-enabled ChatGPT, replies that “confidence isn’t just built in the gym” and promotes a (fictional) insole product that “adds one vertical inch to your height” to help “short kings stand tall.” The end of the spot features Dr. Dre’s “What’s the Difference” with the lyric, “What’s the difference between me and you?”
About the rival’s ads, Altman said he thought “they are funny, and I laughed.” But, he said, “I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we won’t do exactly this; we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them. We are not stupid and we know our users would reject that,” Altman wrote in a post on X.
“I guess it’s on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren’t real, but a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it,” Altman said. According to OpenAI, the ChatGPT ads will be “clearly labeled” and separated from the “organic answer” provided by the AI system, asserting that ads it serves will not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.”
Contacted by Variety, Anthropic declined to comment on Altman’s remarks.
Anthropic will air one of the 60-second spots (“How can I communicate better with my mom?”) as a pregame ad on NBC and a 30-second in-game ad cutdown of the “Can I get a six-pack quickly?” ad during the game.
In a blog post, Anthropic further spelled out its philosophy toward ads. “Advertising drives competition, helps people discover new products, and allows services like email and social media to be offered for free,” the company says. “But 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.”
The Anthropic blog continued, “We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests. So we’ve made a choice: Claude will remain ad-free. 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.”
Altman, for his part, said the point of making AI ad-supported is to widen access to the tech.
“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions,” he wrote, adding that “More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the U.S., so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do.” He also noted that ChatGPT Plus and Pro tiers exclude ads.
Altman also alleged that “Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI — they block companies they don’t like from using their coding product (including us), they want to write the rules themselves for what people can and can’t use AI for, and now they also want to tell other companies what their business models can be.”
OpenAI’s own 2026 Super Bowl ad, Altman wrote, is “about builders, and how anyone can now build anything.” He claimed there have been more than 500,000 downloads of OpenAI’s Codex coding agent app since it launched on Feb. 2.
“This time belongs to the builders, not the people who want to control them,” Altman concluded his post.
Watch the four Anthropic ads:
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, immediately lashed out about how his competitor positioned OpenAI’s move into advertising, accusing Anthropic of producing “deceptive” ads that are “clearly dishonest.”
OpenAI said last month that it will begin testing ads on the ChatGPT’s free and low-price subscription tier for users in the U.S. The company promised that user data and conversations will “never” be “sold to advertisers.”
One of the Anthropic ads — a version of which will air on NBC’s Super Bowl LX telecast — spoofs an OpenAI commercial that depicts a young man doing pull-ups in a park and uses ChatGPT to create a workout plan. In the Anthropic spot, the guy asks the AI agent, “Hey, can I get six-pack quickly?” The AI chatbot, clearly meant to be an ad-enabled ChatGPT, replies that “confidence isn’t just built in the gym” and promotes a (fictional) insole product that “adds one vertical inch to your height” to help “short kings stand tall.” The end of the spot features Dr. Dre’s “What’s the Difference” with the lyric, “What’s the difference between me and you?”
About the rival’s ads, Altman said he thought “they are funny, and I laughed.” But, he said, “I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we won’t do exactly this; we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them. We are not stupid and we know our users would reject that,” Altman wrote in a post on X.
“I guess it’s on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren’t real, but a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it,” Altman said. According to OpenAI, the ChatGPT ads will be “clearly labeled” and separated from the “organic answer” provided by the AI system, asserting that ads it serves will not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.”
Contacted by Variety, Anthropic declined to comment on Altman’s remarks.
Anthropic will air one of the 60-second spots (“How can I communicate better with my mom?”) as a pregame ad on NBC and a 30-second in-game ad cutdown of the “Can I get a six-pack quickly?” ad during the game.
In a blog post, Anthropic further spelled out its philosophy toward ads. “Advertising drives competition, helps people discover new products, and allows services like email and social media to be offered for free,” the company says. “But 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.”
The Anthropic blog continued, “We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests. So we’ve made a choice: Claude will remain ad-free. 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.”
Altman, for his part, said the point of making AI ad-supported is to widen access to the tech.
“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions,” he wrote, adding that “More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the U.S., so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do.” He also noted that ChatGPT Plus and Pro tiers exclude ads.
Altman also alleged that “Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI — they block companies they don’t like from using their coding product (including us), they want to write the rules themselves for what people can and can’t use AI for, and now they also want to tell other companies what their business models can be.”
OpenAI’s own 2026 Super Bowl ad, Altman wrote, is “about builders, and how anyone can now build anything.” He claimed there have been more than 500,000 downloads of OpenAI’s Codex coding agent app since it launched on Feb. 2.
“This time belongs to the builders, not the people who want to control them,” Altman concluded his post.
Watch the four Anthropic ads: