On Wednesday, Anthropic announced that its AI chatbot, Cloud, will remain free of ads, drawing a clear line between it and rival OpenAI, which last month began testing ads in the low-cost tier of ChatGPIT. The announcement comes alongside a Super Bowl ad campaign that mocks AI assistants that interrupt personal interactions with product pitches.
“There are many good places to advertise. Conversations with the cloud are not one of them,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post. The company argued that including ads in AI conversations would be “inconsistent” with what it wants the cloud to be: “a truly helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.”
This stance contrasts with OpenAI’s January announcement that it would begin testing banner ads for free users and ChatGPT Go customers in the US. OpenAI said they will appear below ad responses and will not affect the chatbot’s actual responses. Paid customers at the Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers will not see ads on ChatGPT.
Anthropic’s 2026 Super Bowl ad.
“We want the cloud to act clearly in the best interest of our users,” Anthropic wrote. “So we’ve made an alternative: Cloud will remain ad-free. Our users will not see ‘sponsored’ links next to their interactions with Cloud; nor will Cloud’s responses be influenced by advertisers or contain third-party product placements that our users did not ask for.”
The competition between OpenAI and Anthropic has recently intensified due to the rise of AI coding agents. Cloud Code, Anthropic’s coding tool, and OpenAI’s Codex have similar capabilities, but Cloud Code has been widely popular among developers and is penetrating OpenAI’s territory. Last month, The Verge reported that many developers inside Microsoft, a longtime OpenAI beneficiary, are adopting cloud code, choosing Anthropic products instead of Microsoft’s Copilot, which is powered by technology originated in OpenAI.
In this environment, Anthropic couldn’t help but take a dig at OpenAI. In its Super Bowl ad, we see a thin man struggling to do pull-ups next to a fitness instructor, who is a stand-in for an AI assistant. The man asks the “assistant” for help creating a workout plan, but the assistant slips in an advertisement for a supplement, leaving the man confused. No one is named in the ad, and OpenAI has said it will not include ads in chat text, but the implications for Anthropic are clear.
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