The announcements come to ChatGPT, as OpenAI announced in January. Just two weeks later, the company’s move is mocked in rival Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad campaign to promote its AI assistant Claude.
The firm debuts at the major sporting event – a year after OpenAI – with a series of ads in which it satirizes the impact of advertising on the relevance and usefulness of the answers offered by AI tools. Devised by the Mother agency, the campaign conveys Anthropic’s promise not to monetize its products and services through advertising.
Ads Imagine How Ads Interrupt User Conversations With AI
Under the claim “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” the company imagines a not-too-distant future in which ads interrupt users’ conversations with artificial intelligence and cloud the results of their queries. With this, Anthropic takes advantage of one of the largest advertising stages in the world to argue that some places should not have advertising.
The campaign consists of four spots, all of them produced by Biscuit Filmworks. In them he personifies the tools of his rivals, alluding mainly to ChatGPT, in scenes that recreate conversations with users. What begins as a useful and enriching dialogue with the assistant turns into something ridiculous when the tool makes recommendations that are unrelated to the query made or that have not been requested.
In one of the ads, a young man asks the tool how he can get good abs quickly, and after some advice, it advises him to try “Step Boost Maxx”, a fictitious brand of insoles. This spot refers to one of those launched by OpenAI in September last year to promote ChatGPT.
In another, when the user asks a question about how to better communicate with his mother, he receives a suggestion to register his mother on a dating platform for seniors.
While the different spots reflect the variety of topics users ask questions about, the campaign reflects the way advertising can cloud experiences with artificial intelligence. In addition, each spot is introduced by a sign that alludes to the emotions that users may experience when encountering ads on ChatGPT, such as disappointment or betrayal.
Anthropic’s ads poke fun at its competition’s move, but they also serve to highlight its value proposition over Claude, emphasizing its promise not to rely on advertising to bring the service closer to users.
Along with the spots, Anthropic has published a manifesto in which it expresses its vision regarding advertising in AI tools. “There are many good places to advertise. A conversation with Claude is not one of them“, comments the company. “Advertising drives competition, helps people discover new products, and makes it possible to offer services like email and social media for free. “But including ads in conversations with Claude would be incompatible with what we want him to be: a truly useful assistant for work and deep reflection.””.
Anthropic maintains that its intention is for Claude to act in the best interest of users, and therefore has made the decision not to include advertising. “Our users will not see “sponsored” links next to their conversations with Claude; Your responses will also not be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements that our users have not requested.“, they explain.
The company reaffirms its business model, which combines business contracts with paid subscriptions, and therefore does not depend on advertising. “This is a trade-off choice, and we respect that other AI companies may reasonably come to different conclusions.”, comments the company.
The campaign is part of the “Keep Thinking” platform, introduced by Anthropic in September last year and which positions Claude as an ally for reflection rather than a platform that only seeks to attract attention.
OpenAI’s response
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was quick to share his opinion regarding Anthropic’s campaign. In an extensive publication on the social network, X has acknowledged that he found the ads funny, but describes them as dishonest. “Our most important principle for ads is that we won’t do exactly this; obviously, we would never run ads the way Anthropic presents them. We are not stupid and we know that our users would reject it”he pointed out.
Altman defends advertising as a way to make AI accessible
He has also harshly criticized the company for using “a doublespeak to criticize theoretical misleading ads that are not real“and, furthermore, doing so within the framework of the Super Bowl. He defends OpenAI’s commitment to advertising as a way to keep the tool free and, thus, make it more accessible.”There are more Texans using free ChatGPT than there are users using Claude in the entire United States, so we have a different problem than them” said Altman.
In this sense, he assures that “Anthropic offers an expensive product to wealthy people“, and “they want to control what people do with AI: they stop companies they don’t like from using their programming product (including us), they want to set the rules for what AI can and can’t be used for, and now they also want to tell other companies what their business models can be”.
Altman has reaffirmed OpenAI’s commitment to broad and democratic decision-making, accessibility to technology, and building a resilient ecosystem for mainstream AI, which it wants to make safe and beneficial for everyone. “We will continue to work hard to offer our users even more information at increasingly lower prices”, he assured.
