Here’s the rundown for those who haven’t been paying attention to this AI saga that’s been unfolding for several weeks now.
The Set Up
ChatGPT announced on January 16th, 2026 it will incorporate ads into the platform.
Earlier, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that ads would be a “last resort” for them.
But the company is under the gun to increase profitability ASAP, given its massive cumulative losses. So, it has turned to ads.
OpenAI promises, of course, to incorporate ads into an ethical and transparent way, similar to sponsored results on Google.
The Ad Battle Begins
Anthropic, in response, has launched a series of ads comedically jabbing ChatGPT for this decision, all without mentioning them by name. At the same time, Claude is reinforcing it’s own position to never incorporate ads into LLM conversations.
Here’s one Claude ad with a coach metaphor, which ran during the Super Bowl.
And another with a therapist metaphor.
In response, Sam Altman posted a lengthy quote tweet trying to sound casual and unbothered, while also downplaying this vector of critique. It fell pretty flat though, and also had a bit of an air of PR crisis management contrivance.
Sam Altman @samaFirst, the good part of the Anthropic ads: they are funny, and I laughed.
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
The Escalation
This advertising battle ramped up amid the backdrop of Claude taking the spotlight recently among hardcore AI builders.
Particularly, Claude Code has shown momentous gains over ChatGPT’s Codex. Developers and vibe coders have begun preferring Claude Code for open source projects like OpenClaw. And the fervor has gotten so intense that Mac Mini’s briefly went out of stock due to so many devs setting up virtual AI Agents running Claude.
However, from a pure market dominance perspective, ChatGPT still leads massively.
Yet Claude appears to be gaining on this.
In addition to their standard ads, Anthropic has also launched a number of influencer collaborations, particularly targeting female-leaning, artsy, hipster audiences, which have been well-received and are cleverly positioned from a marketing perspective.
Justine Moore @venturetwinsClaude is going for the girls ✨
My IG and TikTok feeds have been flooded with sponsored Claude videos from one demographic of creator - artsy girls who can't code.
I saw so many of them that I decided to start saving them down (excerpts ⬇️). There's definitely a pattern!
It feels a little bit like the “I’m a Windows, I’m a Mac” campaign for the AI era.
This dynamic continued to escalate leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, when Claude and ChatGPT both aired prime time ads.
The Super Bowl
Claude ran the coach ad, included towards the top of this Substack post. It resonated well among AI savvy audiences, but for many people it went over their heads.
My wife, for instance, only noticed that it was a robot-sounding Coach, and then saw the Claude logo at the end, so it might not have had the intended impact.
You have to be pretty in-the-know to get that Claude was taking a jab at OpenAI.
OpenAI’s Super Bowl ad, by comparison, came off as confident and tasteful, focusing on the problems that ChatGPT solves rather than its competitors. This is considered best practice for a leading brand in any category.
The “YOU CAN JUST BUILD THINGS” line at the end was perfect.
What Will Happen Next?
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