Sam Altman got exceptionally testy over Claude Super Bowl ads

Anthropic’s Super Bowl commercial — one of four spots the AI lab released on Wednesday — opens with the word “BETRAYAL” splashed dramatically across the screen. The camera then cuts to a man sincerely asking a chatbot, clearly meant to resemble ChatGPT, for advice on how to talk to his mom.

The chatbot, portrayed by a blonde woman, offers familiar, earnest guidance: listen more, try going for a nature walk. Then the tone abruptly shifts, turning into an ad for a fictional (one hopes) cougar-dating service called Golden Encounters. The spot ends with Anthropic asserting that while ads may be coming to AI broadly, they will not be coming to its own chatbot, Claude.

Another ad follows a slight young man seeking help to build a six-pack. After sharing his height, age, and weight, the chatbot responds not with fitness advice, but with an advertisement for height-boosting insoles.

The commercials are clearly aimed at users of OpenAI, following that company’s recent announcement that advertising will be introduced to ChatGPT’s free tier. They quickly sparked buzz and headlines suggesting Anthropic was “mocking,” “skewering,” or “dunking on” OpenAI.

The ads were amusing enough that Sam Altman admitted on X that he laughed when he saw them. But the humor clearly wore thin. Altman went on to publish a lengthy post that escalated into accusations that his rival was being “dishonest” and even “authoritarian.”

In the post, Altman explained that OpenAI’s planned ad-supported tier is intended to help shoulder the cost of offering free access to ChatGPT for millions of users. ChatGPT remains the most widely used chatbot by a significant margin.

Altman objected strongly to what he called the ads’ “dishonest” implication — that ChatGPT would manipulate conversations to insert advertisements, potentially for inappropriate products. “We would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them,” Altman wrote. “We are not stupid and we know our users would reject that.”

OpenAI has stated that ads will be clearly labelledd, separated from chat content, and will not influence responses. However, the company has also said that ads will be contextually relevant to the conversation, which is precisely the point Anthropic’s ads are poking at. As OpenAI put it in a blog post: “We plan to test ads at the bottom of answers in ChatGPT when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation.”

Altman then turned his criticism toward Anthropic’s business model. “Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” he wrote, adding that OpenAI believes strongly in bringing AI to billions who cannot afford subscriptions.

That framing is debatable. Claude also offers a free tier, with paid plans at $0, $17, $100, and $200, while ChatGPT’s tiers are priced at $0, $8, $20, and $200. By most measures, the subscription structures are broadly comparable.

Altman also accused Anthropic of trying to control how people use AI. He claimed the company blocks use of Claude Code by “companies they don’t like,” including OpenAI, and dictates what users can and cannot do with its models.

Anthropic has long positioned itself around the idea of “responsible AI.” The company was founded by former OpenAI employees who said they left because they were concerned about safety practices at their previous employer.

That said, both companies enforce usage policies and guardrails and speak extensively about AI safety. While OpenAI permits specific uses, such as erotica that Anthropic does not, OpenAI also restricts categories of content, particularly around mental health, much like Anthropic does.

Altman pushed the critique further, however, when he described Anthropic as “authoritarian.”

“One authoritarian company won’t get us there on their own, to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path,” he wrote.

Invoking “authoritarianism” in response to a tongue-in-cheek Super Bowl ad feels overblown at best. It is especially jarring given the current global context, where protesters in various countries have been killed by their own governments. Business rivals have taken shots at each other through advertising for decades, but in this case, Anthropic’s message clearly struck a nerve.