Sam Altman became exceptionally irritable over Claude’s Super Bowl commercials

Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad, one of four ads scrapped by AI lab Wednesdaybegins with the word “BETRAYAL” boldly displayed on the screen. The camera pans to a man sincerely asking a chatbot (obviously intended to represent ChatGPT) for advice on how to talk to his mother.

The robot, played by a blonde woman, offers some classic advice. Start by listening. Try a nature walk! And then turns into an ad for a fictional (we hope!) cougar dating site called Golden Encounters. Anthropic ends the spot by saying that even if the ads come to AI, they won’t come to its own chatbot, Claude.

Another advertisement features a slight young man looking for advice on building a six-pack. After indicating his height, age and weight, the robot offers him an advertisement for height-increasing insoles.

Anthropic ads are cleverly targeted at OpenAI users, after that company recent announcement that the ads will be served on the free tier of ChatGPT. And they immediately caused a sensation, generating anthropogenic titles “mocks” “skewers” And “to soak” OpenAI.

They’re funny enough that even Sam Altman admitted the that he made fun of them. But he obviously didn’t find them really funny. They inspired him to write a novel-sized speech that resulted in calling his rival “dishonest” and “authoritarian.”

First of all, the good thing about the Anthropic ads: they are funny and I laughed.

But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so blatantly dishonest. Our most important principle in advertising is that we won’t do just that; we would obviously never run ads the Anthropic way…

– Sam Altman (@sama) February 4, 2026

In this article, Altman explains that an ad-supported tier is intended to take on the burden of offering ChatGPT free to many of its millions of users. ChatGPT is still by far the most popular chatbot.

But OpenAI’s CEO insisted the ads were “disingenuous” by implying that ChatGPT would distort a conversation to insert an ad (and possibly for the wrong color product, to boot). “We will obviously never run ads the way Anthropic describes them,” Altman wrote in the social media post. “We’re not stupid and we know our users would reject this.”

Indeed, OpenAI promised that the advertisements would be separated, labeled and would never influence a chat. But the company also said it plans to make them specific to conversations — which is the central claim of Anthropic’s ads. As OpenAI explained on his blog, “We plan to test ads at the bottom of replies in ChatGPT when there is a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation.”

Altman then threw equally questionable claims at his rival. “Anthropic serves an expensive product to the rich,” he writes. “We are also convinced that we must bring AI to the billions of people who cannot pay their subscriptions. »

But Claude also offers a free chat tier, with subscriptions at $0, $17, $100, and $200. ChatGPT levels are $0, $8, $20, and $200. One could argue that the subscription levels are fairly equivalent.

Altman also claimed in his post that “Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI.” He says it blocks the use of Claude Code by “companies they don’t like,” like OpenAI, and that Anthropic tells people why they can and can’t use AI.

It is true that Anthropic’s entire marketing contract since day one has been “Responsible AI”. The company was founded by two former OpenAI alumni, after allwho claimed to have been alarmed by the safety of AI while working on it.

However, both chatbot companies have usage policiesAI guardrail and talk about AI security. And although OpenAI allows ChatGPT to be used for eroticism while being anthropic don’t doOpenAI, like Anthropic, has determined that some content should be blockedparticularly in matters of mental health.

Yet Altman took this argument that Anthropic tells you what to do to an extreme level when he accused Anthropic of being “authoritarian.”

“An authoritarian company alone will not achieve this, let alone the other obvious risks. It is a dark path,” he wrote.

Using “bossy” in a rant about a cheeky Super Bowl ad is inappropriate at best. This is particularly awkward considering the current geopolitical environment in which protesters around the world were killed by agents of their own government. While commercial competitors have been battling it out in advertisements since the dawn of time, Anthropic has clearly struck a nerve.