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There’s at least one service that won’t be plastered with ads anytime soon.
By Matt Jancer
Who, honestly, was surprised when the rumor mill began churning that OpenAI was maybe, just maybe, considering inserting advertisements into ChatGPT? Or when an eagle-eyed observer noticed a bit of code in ChatGPT’s Android app that seemed to quietly build the bedrock for those rumored ads?
Maybe I’m just reenacting the same things Victorians must’ve said about newspaper advertisements and painted signs on the sides of downtown businesses, but really: They’re wedging ads into everything these days.
Then it’s a breath of fresh air that Anthropic has just said that Claude, one of ChatGPT’s arch-competitors, won’t be getting ads.
Anthropic already does things a bit differently from OpenAI. Siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei founded Anthropic in 2021 after leaving OpenAI. They’d become uncomfortable with OpenAI’s commercial designs.
Part of Anthropic’s founding DNA is that they pledge to “not to train or deploy models unless (they) have implemented adequate safeguards,” in contrast to what they point to as hasty progression among other AI companies.
As ChatGPT edges into its own AI and Google Gemini, without a shadow of doubt, it is surely drooling over the chance. Anthropic is positioning this as another way to differentiate its generative AI from the competition.
“Claude will remain ad-free,” Anthropic wrote in a February 4, 2026, post. “Our users won’t see “sponsored” links adjacent to their conversations with Claude; nor will Claude’s responses be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements our users did not ask for.
“Unlike a list of search results, ads that influence a model’s responses may make it difficult to tell whether a given recommendation comes with a commercial motive or not,” Anthropic continues. “Users shouldn’t have to second-guess whether an AI is genuinely helping them or subtly steering the conversation towards something monetizable.”
Hear, hear, Anthropic. I was already a fan of Claude. This just affirms that Anthropic is sticking with a different path than the competition.
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