Ads will expand to fill all online spaces. Ads will inevitably come to both, it's just a matter of when they respectively need or decide to capture that profit and when they feel their users are sufficiently dependent so as not to be able to leave.
He sounds rattled, you don't respond in this manner from the position of power. They didn't need to respond at all, all they did opening their mouth is bring more eyes to Anthropic.
Sam is not having a good week, Nvidia potentially backing out of a 100 billion dollar “commitment”, now looking a fool for getting butt hurt because a company is trying to gain market share via marketing. Looking awfully pathetic
A supremely weak move, perhaps sama didn't learn anything from being on reddit and watching how online discourse doesn't ever favour the defensive ones.
There was absolutely no need to come out publicly with such whiny remarks, it's marketing, as the CEO I'd expect much better than that, he should know that it doesn't help at all. Even more since the ad was funny, coming out with dry remarks about the obvious misrepresentation made as a joke is frankly a bit pathetic.
Losing move but the interesting part is: why? Something hit a nerve, maybe it's a sign of some buildup of stress from overcommitments? I cannot understand...
Whose agency? Ads are designed to reduce agency. It’s a red queen’s race from there. It leads to a high level of optimized manipulation and intrusiveness.
That was one of the core points of anthropic’s article.
sama is right that anthropic’s and openai’s businesses are differently shaped. Thank goodness for that.
I will never understand these chronically online CEOs. Your company has given up its massive lead in AI and is falling further behind Google and Anthropic with every passing day and you have nothing better to do than fight ego battles with random people on X all day? Should be a clear signal to the board that there needs to be a shake up at the top.
It has worked fabulously well for Musk. Can't be surprised other's are trying a similar approach. There is evidence that senior executives have more traits associated with psychopathy than the general population. Seems like the thing to expect really. Wonder what media platform Altman will buy.
Not a fan of Altman, but I don't think the ad will serve Anthropic well in long run.
They may not run ads for foreseeable future, but there will come a point where they introduce a different tier service that does, whether they want it or not.
Anthropic’s strategy is weird, they may not be inserting ads today but I am sure this is where they will end up if they get enough volume of users. So saying “not to Claude” is putting them in the same plane as google’s “do no evil”. They will walk it back sooner or later.
Interesting part of the making of these ads - "While Claude helped behind the scenes – synthesising research and streamlining production – Anthropic and Mother say the concept, direction, scripts, performances and production were led by human teams."
> Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.
But they are paying, aren't they?
Advertisements don't generate money from thin air. Advertisements cause people to spend money they otherwise would not have spent. That's why companies buy ads in the first place.
And if you're showing ads to poor people, you're probably causing them to spend money they don't have.
I am far from a SamA stan, but this line was pretty good a zinger:
"More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US, so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do. (If you want to pay for ChatGPT Plus or Pro, we don't show you ads.)"
Why the incumbent BigCo AI CEO -- who has more Texans using their product than apparently Claude's entire US userbase -- needs to or rather is choosing to be using zingers to make a rebuttal about a competitor's ads is much more interesting than the content of the message itself... which is mostly corporate feelgood slop.
Is OpenAI's runway actually as bad as the doomers like Ed Zitron think it is? Is OpenAI's deal with NVIDIA actually on ice? Are they seeing something in the subscription data that is troubling? Maybe it's nothing and SamA just felt like doing some dunking on twitter today. Or maybe the stress levels around running openAI have increased.
I previously thought OpenAI was going to be fine and the doomers were wrong. I still think the race is theirs to lose since they have very strong branding and userbase right now. But this is a very weak signal that gives me more pause about OpenAI's future than any of the doomsayer articles have.
I give a slightly higher weight to my psychoanalysis of the company's CEO's actions because none of the doomer articles have access to material nonpublic information or company internals to truly opine on the financial health of a multibillion dollar enterprise.
> Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.
This is a glaring admission ChatGPT is a poor man's Claude in the literal sense.
The guy's a master of spin, no doubt. I don't know how you start out with the concept of ads in AI chatbots and end with "This time belongs to the builders, not the people who want to control them." What a bunch of generic nonsense... and yet people lap it up like puppy dogs.
> We are committed to broad, democratic decision making in addition to access. We are also committed to building the most resilient ecosystem for advanced AI. We care a great deal about safe, broadly beneficial AGI, and we know the only way to get there is to work with the world to prepare.
> One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own, to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path.
It’s one thing to say your competitors are hypocrites they will have ads one day, just watch. But democratic vs authoritarian? Come on. What is next? They are Chinese spies and Russian agents? Smh
34 comments
[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 51.4 ms ] threadSays the guy trying to buy high resolution scans of people's eyeballs for $25 a pop.
Okay dude.
There was absolutely no need to come out publicly with such whiny remarks, it's marketing, as the CEO I'd expect much better than that, he should know that it doesn't help at all. Even more since the ad was funny, coming out with dry remarks about the obvious misrepresentation made as a joke is frankly a bit pathetic.
Losing move but the interesting part is: why? Something hit a nerve, maybe it's a sign of some buildup of stress from overcommitments? I cannot understand...
Whose agency? Ads are designed to reduce agency. It’s a red queen’s race from there. It leads to a high level of optimized manipulation and intrusiveness.
That was one of the core points of anthropic’s article.
sama is right that anthropic’s and openai’s businesses are differently shaped. Thank goodness for that.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman was the biggest donor to Trump's super PAC in H2 2025, donating $25M https://www.techmeme.com/260102/p10#a260102p10
They may not run ads for foreseeable future, but there will come a point where they introduce a different tier service that does, whether they want it or not.
Their investors will call the shot.
* https://youtu.be/FBSam25u8O4
* https://youtu.be/De-_wQpKw0s
* https://youtu.be/kQRu7DdTTVA
* https://youtu.be/3sVD3aG_azw
Hope the dude is ok, can't imagine getting so offended by these ads
https://lbbonline.com/news/claude-anthropic-mother-jeff-low-...
I wonder how much the CEO of ChatGPT used his own weapon to counter (very weakly, imo) this human-made attack ad.
But they are paying, aren't they?
Advertisements don't generate money from thin air. Advertisements cause people to spend money they otherwise would not have spent. That's why companies buy ads in the first place.
And if you're showing ads to poor people, you're probably causing them to spend money they don't have.
"More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US, so we have a differently-shaped problem than they do. (If you want to pay for ChatGPT Plus or Pro, we don't show you ads.)"
Why the incumbent BigCo AI CEO -- who has more Texans using their product than apparently Claude's entire US userbase -- needs to or rather is choosing to be using zingers to make a rebuttal about a competitor's ads is much more interesting than the content of the message itself... which is mostly corporate feelgood slop.
Is OpenAI's runway actually as bad as the doomers like Ed Zitron think it is? Is OpenAI's deal with NVIDIA actually on ice? Are they seeing something in the subscription data that is troubling? Maybe it's nothing and SamA just felt like doing some dunking on twitter today. Or maybe the stress levels around running openAI have increased.
I previously thought OpenAI was going to be fine and the doomers were wrong. I still think the race is theirs to lose since they have very strong branding and userbase right now. But this is a very weak signal that gives me more pause about OpenAI's future than any of the doomsayer articles have.
I give a slightly higher weight to my psychoanalysis of the company's CEO's actions because none of the doomer articles have access to material nonpublic information or company internals to truly opine on the financial health of a multibillion dollar enterprise.
This is a glaring admission ChatGPT is a poor man's Claude in the literal sense.
> One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own, to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path.
It’s one thing to say your competitors are hypocrites they will have ads one day, just watch. But democratic vs authoritarian? Come on. What is next? They are Chinese spies and Russian agents? Smh
Claude Is a Space to Think
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46884883