Two of the biggest AI companies are feuding over a Super Bowl ad. It’s bigger than you think

Source Domain: www.cnn.com

A long-simmering rivalry between two of the world’s biggest AI companies was on public display this week as Anthropic and OpenAI took swings at one another online.

But the tensions run deeper than a social media spat. The public drama underscored what’s at stake in the fast-moving artificial intelligence race: how AI is regulated, the job market, the economy and massive amounts of money.

A series of new Super Bowl ads from Anthropic on Wednesday set off a chain of events. The ads sent a clear message: The company won’t put advertisements in its Claude chatbot, a declaration that came shortly after OpenAI said ads were coming to ChatGPT. OpenAI executives, including Sam Altman, quickly hit back and accused Anthropic’s ads of being misleading and criticized their competitor’s business model. (OpenAI plans to run its own SuperBowl ad this weekend. )

The rivalry runs deep. Anthropic’s founders are former OpenAI employees who left over disagreements about the ChatGPT maker’s direction, approach to safety and pace of AI development. While ChatGPT has become a household name, Anthropic’s Claude is a favorite among software engineers, who say Claude Code and Claude Cowork have completely changed their industry. OpenAI launched its own coding tool, called Codex, and this week announced more business tools, including a new platform to manage AI agents called Frontier.

Experts say AI could change the way people live and work; the tiff between two of the industry’s biggest players shows how different visions for those changes can be.

‘Betrayal’ and ‘Violation’

Anthropic on Wednesday unveiled a series of ads, two of which will air during the Super Bowl, titled ‘Betrayal,’ ‘Deception,’ ‘Treachery’ and ‘Violation.’ In one ad , a man asks an older woman how he can…

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