Did they hit a nerve? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s response to ‘authoritarian’ Anthropic’s annihilation of ads-supported AI doesn’t make me trust it more

I’m not sure when this became a thing, but AI firm Anthropic has released the ads it intends to show during the Super Bowl. Which is in two days, and obviously has as big a live audience as you get, which is why you’re paying up to $10 million per 30 seconds of airtime.

Anthropic’s adverts criticise ads being introduced to ChatGPT, and describe it as a “betrayal” of users. I regret to inform you all that the irony metre has officially smashed. It has gone off the scale.

First thing to say is, the ads are also good: I’d recommend watching one or two first, while thinking about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s face the first time he saw them.

To take one example, embedded above, an AI user asks a bot (a middle-aged woman, in the ad) how to communicate better with his mother. When he asks what to do if the advice doesn’t work out, the “AI” recommends a site for dating mature women where “cubs” can find “cougars.”

Each ad ends with the same sting: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” As if it couldn’t get better, this is backed by the refrain from Dr Dre’s What’s the Difference, which goes “What’s the difference between me and you?”

Look, I know it’s marketing, I know they’ve “won” by getting me to write about it, but come on: this shit is funny. These ads incinerate OpenAI and also have the unbuyable quality of perfect timing: Altman announced less than a month ago that, despite once calling it a “last resort”, OpenAI would now feature ads for free and lower-tier users.

And it’s not as if the uncomfortable scenarios Anthropic presents are unbelievable. Are we to believe that AI companies are so scrupulous that they’d never consider incorporating ads directly into AI responses if it would help them recoup the billions they’re spending?

In his response, Altman claimed also to find the ads funny, but then unleashed a further 400 words on why, if you think about it, the ads are not funny, actually, and maybe Anthropic is elitist and trying to control what you think!?!

I wish I was joking but here we go: I’ll try to spare you the worst.

Altman calls Anthropic “clearly dishonest” before saying “we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them.” Then he’s got a 1984 reference ready to go (or did ChatGPT?): “I guess it’s on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren’t real, but a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it.”

Altman goes on a slight tear about how they have more users in Texas than Anthropic does in the US, and how Anthropic “serves an expensive product to rich people.”

Like I said, the irony meter went bust, like two paragraphs in. You can’t quite process how Altman transitions effortlessly to how OpenAI is bringing ChatGPT “to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.”

This is the part where it all goes off-piste. Altman makes the absurd claim that “Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI” and “they also want to tell other companies what their business models can be.”

Where OpenAI is “democratic” and “committed to building the most resilient ecosystem for advanced AI”, you don’t want to look at those absolute bastards over at Anthropic because “one authoritarian company won’t get us there on their own… It is a dark path.”

Look: The irony meter burst in the second paragraph, and another one, and it’s gone again. I can’t keep on watching it. This is what these people responsible for billions say and yes, it is definitely going to work.

Altman ends his monologue with the line: “This time belongs to the builders, not the people who want to control them.”

One reply from an account named Chief offers up the following description of events:

“Anthropic: makes funny ad about ad-driven AI.

Sam: writes 400-word defensive essay calling them authoritarian, deceptive, and elitist.

The ad hit a nerve. Wonder why.”

Yes, you do.