Sam Altman defends ChatGPT, calls Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad 'funny but dishonest'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reacted to the Super Bowl LX ad campaign by rival Anthropic on February 4, 2026, saying that the ads are "funny" but "clearly dishonest" in a lengthy post on X.

Anthropic has released a series of ads, including one set to air during Super Bowl LX on February 8, poking fun at the notion of ads showing up in AI chatbots. The ads feature a generic AI popping up in the middle of common user interactions (therapy sessions, fitness advice, business planning, or homework help) to deliver annoying product ads, complete with the slogan “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”

This is a direct reference to the January 2026 announcement by OpenAI that it would start testing ads in the free version of ChatGPT and the new $8/month ChatGPT Go service in the US. This was previously announced by Altman, who said that ads would be clearly labelled, separate from the main conversation, and would not affect or corrupt the answers given by the model, with the conversations remaining private from the advertisers.

https://x.com/claudeai/status/2019071113741906403?s=20

In his X post, Altman acknowledged the humour firs saying, "First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed." He then addressed the portrayal: "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 depicts them. We are not stupid and we know our users would reject that." He further described the approach as "on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren’t real," noting that a Super Bowl ad was not the expected venue for such a tactic. Altman also contrasted the companies' models, highlighting ChatGPT's broad free access and scale compared to Claude's positioning.

https://x.com/sama/status/2019139174339928189?s=20

The exchange underscores competitive dynamics that exist in the AI sector, with monetization models, OpenAI’s ad-supported free service compared to Anthropic’s ad-free Claude, becoming a means of differentiation.

OpenAI has clarified that ads will enable the free service to be supported for millions without undermining the integrity of responses, while Anthropic has described Claude as a “space to think” that is ad-free.