I hadn't watched these before, but wow the AI wars are no joke. "Betrayal", "Deception", "Violation", "Treachery"... It's like the Cola Wars, but 10x more personal.
Interesting part of the making of these ads - "While Claude helped behind the scenes – synthesising research and streamlining production – Anthropic and Mother say the concept, direction, scripts, performances and production were led by human teams."
> 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.
But they are paying, aren't they?
Advertisements don't generate money from thin air. Advertisements cause people to spend money they otherwise would not have spent. That's why companies buy ads in the first place.
And if you're showing ads to poor people, you're probably causing them to spend money they don't have.
It's a bit more complicated. On average, someone is paying, but averages can be misleading. As we see with free-to-play games, whales can subsidize a lot of usage by other people who don't pay a thing.
It seems like the same is true of advertising. Yes, some people are spending money but it doesn't necessarily follow that they're people who can't afford it.
Whose agency? Ads are designed to reduce agency. It’s a red queen’s race from there. It leads to a high level of optimized manipulation and intrusiveness.
That was one of the core points of anthropic’s article.
sama is right that anthropic’s and openai’s businesses are differently shaped. Thank goodness for that.
Anthropic’s strategy is weird, they may not be inserting ads today but I am sure this is where they will end up if they get enough volume of users. So saying “not to Claude” is putting them in the same plane as google’s “do no evil”. They will walk it back sooner or later.
It's the same ad campaign Samsung did with the charger and headphone jack after Apple ditched them. Let's see if they hold out longer than what Samsung did back then.
Sometimes quality is worth it over quantity of users.
The free to paid user ratio of both services is worth seeing too.
Personally I find both are growing cleanly into their own areas of strengths and that's actually a good thing because it provides more coverage for solutions.
> 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.
This is a glaring admission ChatGPT is a poor man's Claude in the literal sense.
Not a fan of Altman, but I don't think the ad will serve Anthropic well in long run.
They may not run ads for foreseeable future, but there will come a point where they introduce a different tier service that does, whether they want it or not.
Hate to say it, but no one will remember or care when that time comes. It costs them very little to say that if they have no plans in the immediate future to serve ads.
I will never understand these chronically online CEOs. Your company has given up its massive lead in AI and is falling further behind Google and Anthropic with every passing day and you have nothing better to do than fight ego battles with random people on X all day? Should be a clear signal to the board that there needs to be a shake up at the top.
It's influencer marketing. These 'ego battles' are a show to keep their brand in front of you. It's engaging like reality television. This is very valuable, especially for companies that need to fund their growth through investment and grants.
The instant feedback you get from posting on social media is more gratifying/addicting than any other marketing campaign. That's what drives all these CEOs, in my opinion.
I've said before, and I stand by it: Judging by the fact that many CEOs of these BigCos are often the leaders of several other companies, the CEO job probably isn't that hard.
It has worked fabulously well for Musk. Can't be surprised other's are trying a similar approach. There is evidence that senior executives have more traits associated with psychopathy than the general population. Seems like the thing to expect really. Wonder what media platform Altman will buy.
Ads will expand to fill all online spaces. Ads will inevitably come to both, it's just a matter of when they respectively need or decide to capture that profit and when they feel their users are sufficiently dependent so as not to be able to leave.
He sounds rattled, you don't respond in this manner from the position of power. They didn't need to respond at all, all they did opening their mouth is bring more eyes to Anthropic.
That line stood out to me too. I don’t care about any of these companies but one of them accusing another of being authoritarian and a “dark path” is quite ironic.
The guy's a master of spin, no doubt. I don't know how you start out with the concept of ads in AI chatbots and end with "This time belongs to the builders, not the people who want to control them." What a bunch of generic nonsense... and yet people lap it up like puppy dogs.
1) Those Anthropic ads don't matter. Companies eat up their promises all the time and rarely face any consequence. They'll introduce ads one way or another.
2) Sam Altman's tweets don't matter. They never matter. Tweets from any OpenAI employee are purely to pump engagement. If what they said had a sliver of substance we would have had AGI mid-2025.
The whole 'war' is just to keep their brands mentioned on news and social media.
I can't shake the feeling of being spoken to by Gríma Wormtongue. It's just the way Sam talks. The words and phrases he chooses. So much tortured persuasion in all he says.
> We are committed to broad, democratic decision making in addition to access. We are also committed to building the most resilient ecosystem for advanced AI. We care a great deal about safe, broadly beneficial AGI, and we know the only way to get there is to work with the world to prepare.
> One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own, to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path.
It’s one thing to say your competitors are hypocrites they will have ads one day, just watch. But democratic vs authoritarian? Come on. What is next? They are Chinese spies and Russian agents? Smh
I am far from a SamA stan, but this line was pretty good a zinger:
"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.)"
Why the incumbent BigCo AI CEO -- who has more Texans using their product than apparently Claude's entire US userbase -- needs to or rather is choosing to be using zingers to make a rebuttal about a competitor's ads is much more interesting than the content of the message itself... which is mostly corporate feelgood slop.
Is OpenAI's runway actually as bad as the doomers like Ed Zitron think it is? Is OpenAI's deal with NVIDIA actually on ice? Are they seeing something in the subscription data that is troubling? Maybe it's nothing and SamA just felt like doing some dunking on twitter today. Or maybe the stress levels around running openAI have increased.
I previously thought OpenAI was going to be fine and the doomers were wrong. I still think the race is theirs to lose since they have very strong branding and userbase right now. But this is a very weak signal that gives me more pause about OpenAI's future than any of the doomsayer articles have.
I give a slightly higher weight to my psychoanalysis of the company's CEO's actions because none of the doomer articles have access to material nonpublic information or company internals to truly opine on the financial health of a multibillion dollar enterprise.
> I am far from a SamA stan, but this line was pretty good a zinger:
That zinger seemed similar to how Trump deals with criticism from the media -- he tends to begin with an attack on the ratings / popularity of the speaker.
Sam is not having a good week, Nvidia potentially backing out of a 100 billion dollar “commitment”, now looking a fool for getting butt hurt because a company is trying to gain market share via marketing. Looking awfully pathetic
A supremely weak move, perhaps sama didn't learn anything from being on reddit and watching how online discourse doesn't ever favour the defensive ones.
There was absolutely no need to come out publicly with such whiny remarks, it's marketing, as the CEO I'd expect much better than that, he should know that it doesn't help at all. Even more since the ad was funny, coming out with dry remarks about the obvious misrepresentation made as a joke is frankly a bit pathetic.
Losing move but the interesting part is: why? Something hit a nerve, maybe it's a sign of some buildup of stress from overcommitments? I cannot understand...
I think it's all he knows. His "oh, shucks" good-boy routine is what he's been doing for 15 years now, it's gotten him far, it's never been genuine, but it feels especially out of place now with much attention on him and his lies being so obvious.
Does it? Claude the chatbot is available for free, and it can write code, but Claude Code is a separate product that as far as I know is only available on paid plans. Source: https://claude.com/product/claude-code
mi_lk|26 days ago
* https://youtu.be/FBSam25u8O4
* https://youtu.be/De-_wQpKw0s
* https://youtu.be/kQRu7DdTTVA
* https://youtu.be/3sVD3aG_azw
Hope the dude is ok, can't imagine getting so offended by these ads
djeastm|26 days ago
bicepjai|26 days ago
clydethefrog|25 days ago
https://lbbonline.com/news/claude-anthropic-mother-jeff-low-...
I wonder how much the CEO of ChatGPT used his own weapon to counter (very weakly, imo) this human-made attack ad.
verdverm|26 days ago
user568439|26 days ago
ddtaylor|26 days ago
NedF|26 days ago
[deleted]
Wowfunhappy|26 days ago
But they are paying, aren't they?
Advertisements don't generate money from thin air. Advertisements cause people to spend money they otherwise would not have spent. That's why companies buy ads in the first place.
And if you're showing ads to poor people, you're probably causing them to spend money they don't have.
nrb|26 days ago
skybrian|26 days ago
It seems like the same is true of advertising. Yes, some people are spending money but it doesn't necessarily follow that they're people who can't afford it.
Kiboneu|26 days ago
Whose agency? Ads are designed to reduce agency. It’s a red queen’s race from there. It leads to a high level of optimized manipulation and intrusiveness.
That was one of the core points of anthropic’s article.
sama is right that anthropic’s and openai’s businesses are differently shaped. Thank goodness for that.
jethronethro|26 days ago
wakawaka28|26 days ago
yalogin|26 days ago
midoBB|26 days ago
j45|26 days ago
The free to paid user ratio of both services is worth seeing too.
Personally I find both are growing cleanly into their own areas of strengths and that's actually a good thing because it provides more coverage for solutions.
chuckadams|26 days ago
unknown|26 days ago
[deleted]
yas_hmaheshwari|26 days ago
kelvinjps10|26 days ago
bdangubic|26 days ago
smuhakg|26 days ago
This is a glaring admission ChatGPT is a poor man's Claude in the literal sense.
AreShoesFeet000|26 days ago
pcurve|26 days ago
They may not run ads for foreseeable future, but there will come a point where they introduce a different tier service that does, whether they want it or not.
Their investors will call the shot.
Insanity|26 days ago
catlifeonmars|26 days ago
paxys|26 days ago
jcstk|26 days ago
licyeus|26 days ago
Om Malik has been writing about this recently, especially regarding OpenAI / Altman [1], but you can see it everywhere.
1 - https://om.co/2026/02/02/openai-and-the-announcement-economy...
daifi|26 days ago
kylecazar|26 days ago
jimbo808|26 days ago
tombert|26 days ago
unknown|26 days ago
[deleted]
arw0n|26 days ago
> One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own, to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path.
tstrimple|25 days ago
halyconWays|26 days ago
827a|26 days ago
JoshPurtell|26 days ago
add-sub-mul-div|26 days ago
AndyKelley|26 days ago
Handy-Man|26 days ago
plagiarist|26 days ago
keyle|26 days ago
spenvo|26 days ago
OpenAI President Greg Brockman was the biggest donor to Trump's super PAC in H2 2025, donating $25M https://www.techmeme.com/260102/p10#a260102p10
baubino|26 days ago
uejfiweun|26 days ago
raincole|26 days ago
Seriously, we all know:
1) Those Anthropic ads don't matter. Companies eat up their promises all the time and rarely face any consequence. They'll introduce ads one way or another.
2) Sam Altman's tweets don't matter. They never matter. Tweets from any OpenAI employee are purely to pump engagement. If what they said had a sliver of substance we would have had AGI mid-2025.
The whole 'war' is just to keep their brands mentioned on news and social media.
ChrisArchitect|26 days ago
starkeeper|26 days ago
Sammi|26 days ago
unknown|26 days ago
[deleted]
jimmydoe|26 days ago
> One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own, to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path.
It’s one thing to say your competitors are hypocrites they will have ads one day, just watch. But democratic vs authoritarian? Come on. What is next? They are Chinese spies and Russian agents? Smh
unknown|26 days ago
[deleted]
R_Man77|26 days ago
"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.)"
Why the incumbent BigCo AI CEO -- who has more Texans using their product than apparently Claude's entire US userbase -- needs to or rather is choosing to be using zingers to make a rebuttal about a competitor's ads is much more interesting than the content of the message itself... which is mostly corporate feelgood slop.
Is OpenAI's runway actually as bad as the doomers like Ed Zitron think it is? Is OpenAI's deal with NVIDIA actually on ice? Are they seeing something in the subscription data that is troubling? Maybe it's nothing and SamA just felt like doing some dunking on twitter today. Or maybe the stress levels around running openAI have increased.
I previously thought OpenAI was going to be fine and the doomers were wrong. I still think the race is theirs to lose since they have very strong branding and userbase right now. But this is a very weak signal that gives me more pause about OpenAI's future than any of the doomsayer articles have.
I give a slightly higher weight to my psychoanalysis of the company's CEO's actions because none of the doomer articles have access to material nonpublic information or company internals to truly opine on the financial health of a multibillion dollar enterprise.
dougb5|26 days ago
That zinger seemed similar to how Trump deals with criticism from the media -- he tends to begin with an attack on the ratings / popularity of the speaker.
NoPicklez|25 days ago
Think of the Samsung headphone jack commercial.
ChrisArchitect|26 days ago
Claude Is a Space to Think
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884883
glimshe|25 days ago
unknown|26 days ago
[deleted]
tizzzzz|25 days ago
techblueberry|26 days ago
Aboutplants|26 days ago
themafia|26 days ago
Says the guy trying to buy high resolution scans of people's eyeballs for $25 a pop.
Okay dude.
redwood|26 days ago
kylecazar|26 days ago
freejazz|25 days ago
piva00|26 days ago
There was absolutely no need to come out publicly with such whiny remarks, it's marketing, as the CEO I'd expect much better than that, he should know that it doesn't help at all. Even more since the ad was funny, coming out with dry remarks about the obvious misrepresentation made as a joke is frankly a bit pathetic.
Losing move but the interesting part is: why? Something hit a nerve, maybe it's a sign of some buildup of stress from overcommitments? I cannot understand...
harmonic18374|26 days ago
johnsmith1840|26 days ago
bmitc|26 days ago
samstokes|26 days ago