'Clearly dishonest': Sam Altman slams Anthropic's Super Bowl ad, claims rival only serves 'rich people'

Anthropic took a shot at OpenAI with a new set of ads that were aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The AI startup which is led by ex-OpenAI staffer Dario Amodei, took aim at the introduction of ads inside ChatGPT.

One of the ads aired during Super Bowl starts with the caption ‘betrayal’. The ad begins with a hypothetical therapist patient scenario where the patient sitting on the couch asks the AI therapist how they can fix their relationship with their mother. The AI begins by giving some helpful advices and then delves into an advertisement about dating. Anthropic ends the ad with the text, ‘Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude. Keep thinking.’

Sam Altman reacts to Anthropic ad:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reacted to the Anthropic ads in a post on X stated that ‘they are funny’ but the company would ‘never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them.’ Altman went on to state that his users would reject advertisements of the kind depicted by Antrhopic.

Altman then went on to accuse Anthropic of being "clearly dishonest" and engaging in "doublespeak" by using ‘deceptive ads’ to critique a theoretical scenario that isn't real.

“More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US, so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do.” Altman wrote while taking a dig at his rival

Altman then went on argue that Anthropic "serves an expensive product to rich people," while OpenAI is committed to free access because "access creates agency."

“Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI—they block companies they don't like from using their coding product (including us), they want to write the rules themselves for what people can and can't use AI for, and now they also want to tell other companies what their business models can be.” he added

Notably, Anthropic had blocked OpenAI's API access ahead of the GPT-5 launch last year after claiming that the ChatGPT maker was prohibiting its policies by using the services to buid to train competing AI models.

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

Altman also went on to mention OpenAI's Super Bowl ad which he said was focused on builders and ‘how anyone can now build anything’.

“We are enjoying watching so many people switch to Codex. There have now been 500,000 app downloads since launch on Monday, and we think builders are really going to love what’s coming in the next few weeks. I believe Codex is going to win.” he added

As per TV ratings firm Nielsen, 127.7 million tuned in to watch the Super Bowl last year and this year the viewership is expected to be even higher.