On Wednesday, Anthropic rolled out a series of tongue-in-cheek ads taking aim at OpenAI over reports of advertising being introduced on ChatGPT. One of these commercials is scheduled to run during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Super Bowl ad shows a person seeking workout guidance from a human-like version of ChatGPT. Instead of straightforward advice, the assistant pivots to a pitch for shoe insoles marketed as helping “short kings stand tall,” implying that advertisers could exploit user data to deliver targeted promotions.
Altman fired back on X:
Altman fired back on X, labeling the ads “misleading” and saying they distorted OpenAI’s stance. He wrote that the company’s core advertising policy explicitly rules out the kind of behavior portrayed in the commercials.
“We believe everyone deserves to use AI and are committed to free access, because we believe access creates agency. More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US, so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do. (If you want to pay for ChatGPT Plus or Pro, we don’t show you ads),” Altman noted.
“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 added.
First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed.
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 4, 2026
But 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…
He went on to criticize Anthropic for offering what he described as a costly service aimed at wealthy users, and for attempting to dictate how AI is used by restricting access to its coding tools for certain companies, including OpenAI.
The ads were entertaining:
Altman conceded that the ads were entertaining, adding that he found them amusing and even laughed at them. On the same day, Anthropic released its own statement, promising that its chatbot Claude would remain free of advertising.
OpenAI revealed in mid-January that it planned to begin experimenting with advertising across select ChatGPT subscription levels, saying the ads would add value for users while creating a revenue source to support continued free access to the service.
Alongside the announcement, the company shared a set of principles on X, stating that ads would be clearly identified, would not shape or alter ChatGPT’s answers, and that user conversations would remain off-limits to advertisers.
In a post explaining the decision, Altman noted that many people want widespread access to AI tools without paying for them, and said the company believes an ad-supported approach could make that possible.
