A few weeks ago, OpenAI announced that it would begin testing display advertisements in ChatGPT responses. Shortly afterwards, Google promised no ads in Gemini (for now). Which way will other AI companies decide to go? We now have an answer for Anthropic, at least, who appears to be following in Google’s footsteps.
Anthropic recently announced via blog post that its AI chatbot Claude will remain free of ads. There will be no sponsored links in conversations with Claude, and the chatbot’s responses will not be influenced by advertisers or contain product placements.
At the same time, the company released a few promo videos that take jabs at the whole idea of ads in chatbots. While no competitors were directly named, it’s pretty clear what they were going for:
Anthropic believes that while there are many good places for ads, a conversation with Claude is not one of them. Baking ads into the chatbot would defeat Claude’s main purpose of being “a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.”
Sam Altman, CEO of rival company OpenAI, took to social media afterwards with a comment on Anthropic’s advertising promise and videos. Altman seems to see Anthropic’s stance as a veiled attack on OpenAI’s implementation of ads in ChatGPT:
It’s a long-winded essay in which Altman basically goes on the offensive against Anthropic and Claude. He claims that Anthropic’s AI is an expensive product for the rich while ads in ChatGPT keep it accessible to free users (ignoring that Claude itself is also free). Altman also brags that ChatGPT has more free users in the state of Texas than Claude has total users in the entire United States.
All things considered, Claude is still small fry compared to ChatGPT… so what’s got Altman so riled up? A lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep—unless perhaps that lion is slowly losing its established position as king of the jungle. With Gemini and Perplexity hot on its trail, maybe Altman is feeling the heat and taking it out on Anthropic.