On Wednesday, Anthropic announced that its AI chatbot, Claude, will remain free of advertisements, drawing a sharp 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 many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post. The company argued that including ads in AI conversations would be “incompatible” with what it wants Claude to be: “a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.”
The stance contrasts with OpenAI’s January announcement that it would begin testing banner ads for free users and ChatGPT Go subscribers in the US. OpenAI said those ads would appear at the bottom of responses and would not influence the chatbot’s actual answers. Paid subscribers on Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers will not see ads on ChatGPT.
Anthropic’s 2026 Super Bowl commercial.
“We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests,” Anthropic wrote. “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.”
Competition between OpenAI and Anthropic has been fierce of late, due to 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 among 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, choosing Anthropic products over Microsoft’s Copilot, which is powered by tech that originated at OpenAI.
In this climate, Anthropic could not resist taking a dig at OpenAI. In its Super Bowl commercial, we see a thin man struggling to do a pull-up beside a buff fitness instructor, who is a stand-in for an AI assistant. The man asks the “assistant” for help making a workout plan, but the assistant slips in an advertisement for a supplement, confusing the man. The commercial doesn’t name any names, and OpenAI has said it will not include ads in chat text itself, but Anthropic’s implications are clear.
