In a move that marketing professor Scott Galloway is calling a “seminal moment” in the AI wars, Anthropic used a Super Bowl commercial to take a direct shot at market leader OpenAI, successfully getting under the skin of CEO Sam Altman. The advertisement, which claims “Ads are coming to AI, but not to Claude,” capitalizes on recent news that OpenAI is testing advertisements on ChatGPT. According to Galloway, the ad’s effectiveness lies not just in its humor, but in its recognition of the dominant, unspoken use case for artificial intelligence: therapy.
The top use case for AI is, in fact, “therapy,” according to Galloway, and “people are revealing their most intimate questions and concerns to AI.” (That is the set-up for the Anthropic commercial.)
Introducing ads in the middle of a therapy session creates a dystopian scenario that Anthropic is smart to exploit, Galloway said. If a user confesses to an AI that they are suffering from depression, the trust is broken if the platform immediately pivots to monetization.
“The thought that this person is going to take all your personal information and start saying ‘Oh you seem to be suffering from depression. Have you thought about Lexapro…?’” is a major vulnerability for OpenAI, he added.
By drawing a hard line in the sand—promising no ads—Anthropic has executed a classic brand strategy, Galloway said.
Because OpenAI has already signaled a move toward ad-supported models to meet growth projections, he explained, it cannot easily refute Anthropic’s privacy-focused stance.
The effectiveness of the attack was made evident by the response from OpenAI’s Altman. Following the ad’s release, he posted a long critique on social media, calling the commercial “dishonest” and “deceptive.”
This marketing coup may signal a shift in market dominance. Galloway predicted that within 12 months, Anthropic will be worth more than OpenAI. He drew a parallel to the PC wars of the 1990s, when Gateway (consumer-focused) eventually lost ground to Dell (enterprise-focused). While OpenAI has captured the consumer’s imagination, Anthropic is aggressively targeting the enterprise market where data security and privacy are paramount.
Ultimately, the ad highlighted a critical juncture for the industry. Users want to know that the AI they confide in is a “clean, well-lit place,” free from pharmaceutical influence or commercial manipulation. By tapping into the intimacy of the user-AI relationship—effectively, the therapy use case—Anthropic has drawn first blood in the battle for trust.
Regarding Altman’s frustration, Galloway’s co-host Elson agreed that Anthropic is emerging as the winner, “and for Sam Altman to come out and give this essay on critiquing the details… it just rubs salt into the wounds.”
