Sam Altman slams Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad as clearly dishonest and doublespeak
In a Wednesday X post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed back hard against Anthropic’s latest Super Bowl ad, calling the campaign “clearly dishonest” and accusing Anthropic of doublespeak. “We would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them,” he wrote, adding that OpenAI “is not stupid and we know our users would reject that.”
Anthropic’s new campaign, launched around the big game, stops short of naming OpenAI or ChatGPT. By design, it frames a critique of “deceptive” advertising while promoting Claude, Anthropic’s AI, and its approach to product placement. In contrast, Anthropic says its messaging avoids OpenAI and does not position Claude’s replies as being swayed by advertisers or third-party placements that users didn’t request.
OpenAI has signaled that its own ad testing will appear only for logged-in users on free or ChatGPT Go accounts, with a clear boundary: ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers and remain clearly labeled and separate from content. Altman emphasized that the ad Altman referenced is about “builders, and how anyone can now build anything.”
In his full post, Altman began by acknowledging the humor in Anthropic’s ad, then pivoted to a pointed critique. He reiterated that OpenAI’s pricing and access goals differ from Anthropic’s: “We believe everyone deserves to use AI and are committed to free access, because we believe access creates agency.” He noted that more Texans use ChatGPT for free than Claude anywhere in the U.S., framing their own business model as one aimed at broad access rather than limiting who can participate.
Altman also took issue with what he described as Anthropic’s desire to control AI use. He accused the company of blocking other firms from using their coding product and attempting to set the rules for what people can and cannot do with AI. He labeled this posture as authoritarian and warned of the risks involved in concentrating control in a single company.
“The time belongs to builders, not the people who want to control them,” Altman wrote. He underscored OpenAI’s commitment to a resilient, broadly beneficial AI ecosystem and to making sophisticated AI cheaper and more accessible over time.
On the product front, Altman highlighted the growing appeal of Codex, noting more than 500,000 app downloads since its Monday launch and expressing optimism that developers will embrace what’s coming next. He reiterated that OpenAI intends to push for lower prices and wider access as the era of AI-building accelerates.
This stance reflects OpenAI’s broader belief in democratic, open-ended progress for AI—built through collaboration with multiple players rather than through unilateral control by a single company.