Sam Altman says Anthropic's Super Bowl spot is 'dishonest' about ChatGPT ads, but he agrees it's funny
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- Sam Altman said he laughed at Anthropic's Super Bowl ads, but called them deceptive.
- The ads mock the fact that advertising is coming to ChatGPT.
- Altman said OpenAI would never use ads the way it's depicted.
If you thought the Anthropic ads roasting ChatGPT were funny, you weren't the only one.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said he, too, thought they were funny, but he also had some complaints.
"First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed," he wrote in a lengthy X post on Wednesday. "But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest."
Anthropic, the maker of the AI chatbot Claude, shared four ads online on Wednesday. The campaign is set to run during the Super Bowl on Sunday and takes direct aim at OpenAI's decision to roll out advertising on ChatGPT.
"Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude," the ad, which doesn't mention OpenAI or ChatGPT by name, says.
The ads feature a human playing a fictional version of a chatbot who jarringly interjects mid-conversation to push a product. In one ad, when the user asks for help achieving a six-pack quickly, the stand-in chatbot answers and then also suggests buying a specific pair of insoles to appear taller, along with a discount code.
"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," Altman said of the ads, calling them "deceptive."
Altman said OpenAI believes everyone deserves access to AI and is focused on bringing AI to billions of people who can't afford to pay for subscriptions.
OpenAI offers individual plans for ChatGPT that range from free to $200 a month. Individual plans for Anthropic's Claude range from free to $100 a month. Both also offer team and enterprise plans.
"More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US, so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do," he said, adding, "Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people."
Read his full thoughts here:
First, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed.
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 4, 2026
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…
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Altman said OpenAI would run its own Super Bowl Ad that was "about builders, and how anyone can now build anything."