Yesterday I wrote a short post on the impact that advertising would have on generative AI, a topic I’ve been thinking and writing about for the past three years. Seems the folks at Anthropic have been thinking about it too, and this morning they gave their thoughts full voice.
“Claude is a space to think,” the company announced in a blog post that promised to never let advertising creep into its core consumer product. “The history of ad-supported products suggests that advertising incentives, once introduced, tend to expand over time as they become integrated into revenue targets and product development, blurring boundaries that were once more clear-cut. We’ve chosen not to introduce these dynamics into Claude.”
This is exactly the point I was making in yesterday’s post – “Advertising Built Generative AI. Now Comes the Remodel.” And while Anthropic’s written post is both thoughtful and measured, the company also launched a four-pack of ads illustrating its point – ads that they will be running during the SuperBowl this weekend. Yep, the SuperBowl.
In the videos, Anthropic’s messaging is anything but subtle. Here’s one of them, “Betrayal,” where a pitch-perfect, dead-eyed AI therapist pivots from a question about a patient’s mother to a hard sell for a MILF dating site:
And here’s “Violation,” in which an eerily ripped AI assistant tries to sell shoe lifts to a young man looking to build muscle:
“Deception” plays on the same theme – a gratuitous AI chatbot tries to sell an entrepreneur on a payday loan scheme:
And in “Treachery” an AI professor counsels a student to celebrate turning in a good essay by treating herself to jewelry.
Anthropic knows exactly what it’s doing by tacking into the AI ads debate, and I can only imagine the fits these ads are giving its main competitor OpenAI. Actually, thanks to social media, we don’t have to wonder – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman couldn’t help but respond, and clearly, a nerve has been struck.
Well played, Anthropic. Now let’s see if that SuperBowl spend delivers a positive ROAS (that’s Return on Ad Spend, for those of you taking notes…).
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