Anthropic is spending millions of dollars on commercials during Sunday night’s National Football League championship game to take a public swipe at rival OpenAI, escalating one of the most visible clashes yet between major artificial intelligence companies. The ads criticize OpenAI’s reported plans to introduce advertising into its ChatGPT chatbot, turning the Super Bowl into a battleground for competing visions of how AI should be funded and presented to users.
One 30-second spot from Anthropic, set to air on NBC during Super Bowl LX, delivers a thinly veiled jab at ChatGPT. The commercial shows a scrawny young man doing pull-ups in a park who asks a muscular stranger for advice on getting six-pack abs. The stranger responds in a stiff, robotic manner, offering a personalized training plan but abruptly inserting a pitch for shoe inserts that help “short kings stand tall.” The confused reaction sets up the closing line: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” a reference to Anthropic’s chatbot.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman responded sharply, calling the advertisement “deceptive” in a post on social media platform X. Speaking later on the TBPN podcast, Altman said OpenAI respects its users and understands that people would abandon the product if it behaved in the way depicted in the commercial. OpenAI is using its own Super Bowl presence to promote Codex, a software coding product, rather than addressing the advertising controversy directly.
The campaign marks the first time Anthropic’s Claude has appeared in a Super Bowl advertisement. An estimated 120 million viewers are expected to watch the game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots in Santa Clara, California. NBCUniversal’s global advertising chairman Mark Marshall said the average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl spot is about $8 million, with some exceeding $10 million, underscoring the financial stakes of the AI industry’s biggest marketing push to date.
The dueling commercials represent the most public expression yet of a rivalry between two prominent AI labs that are still unprofitable but racing to build consumer loyalty and enterprise business. Both companies are also competing for investor attention as they explore potential public listings as early as this year, raising the stakes of brand perception and market positioning.
Public relations experts say the dispute reflects familiar corporate behavior despite the futuristic technology involved. Sam Singer, president of Singer Associates Public Relations, said the clash shows that even AI companies are driven by the human impulse to argue in public. He added that the visibility of the rivalry could benefit both firms by prompting viewers to think about whether Claude or ChatGPT better fits their needs.
Advertising analysts say the Super Bowl offers a unique chance for AI companies to reshape public opinion about a technology many Americans still view with skepticism. Sean Wright, chief insights and analytics officer at Guideline, said only a small share of U.S. adults currently believe AI will have a positive long-term impact, making tone and storytelling critical to avoiding backlash. Other analysts noted that OpenAI has struggled to land a narrative that resonates, while consumer testing also showed mixed reactions to Anthropic’s ad, suggesting that even with massive exposure, winning public trust in artificial intelligence remains a challenge.
