At the last moment before the Super Bowl in 2026, AI giant Anthropic made an emergency revision to its highly anticipated "big game ad." The move was seen as Anthropic's attempt to find a balance between maintaining its brand stance and avoiding legal disputes after angering OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

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Previously, the version of the ad that was released in advance used a very targeted slogan: "Ads are entering AI, but not into Claude." This statement directly referred to OpenAI's recent announcement of testing ads in ChatGPT. Subsequently, Sam Altman publicly retaliated on social media, accusing the ad of being "clearly dishonest" and "unfair."

The official version replaced the controversial text with a more moderate brand statement: "Ads have their time and place, but your conversation with AI shouldn't be one of them."

Although the tone of the advertisement has softened, Anthropic's core intention remains unchanged. Through this expensive Super Bowl ad, the company continues to emphasize its differentiated positioning of "pure, ad-free" AI.

  • Ad content retrospective: The original ad used humorous personification to show users asking for advice on fitness or mother-child communication skills, only for the AI robot to suddenly awkwardly promote "height-increasing insoles" or "dating websites."

  • Business model dispute: Altman previously responded that OpenAI's advertising model is intended to allow more people to use AI for free, and criticized Anthropic as an "expensive product for the wealthy." In contrast, Anthropic insists that the involvement of ad revenue inevitably distorts the neutrality of AI.