Super Bowl LX wasn't just the Seahawks dismantling the Patriots 29-13. It was the moment the AI industry officially went mainstream — and the rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI went from boardroom tensions to a $16 million public feud broadcast to 130 million viewers.

Of the 66 total ads that aired during Super Bowl LX on February 9, 2026, 15 were AI-related — 23% of all commercials. Google, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, and a handful of startups all bought airtime. Viewers noticed. And they were not entirely thrilled.

"You remember that Super Bowl where it felt like every ad was about crypto? This is the AI Bowl," one viewer wrote on X. The 2022 "Crypto Bowl" comparisons arrived before halftime.

But the real story wasn't the volume of AI ads. It was what two specific companies said — to their audiences, and to each other.

Anthropic's Opening Shot

Five days before the Super Bowl, on February 4, Anthropic released four ads online under the campaign name "A Time and a Place." Created by agency Mother, directed by Jeff Low of Biscuit Filmworks, and set to Dr. Dre's "What's the Difference," the campaign was a direct attack on one specific thing: ads inside AI chatbots.

The tagline: "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude."

Two of the four ads aired during the Super Bowl broadcast:

"Betrayal" — 60 seconds, pregame

A man earnestly asks a chatbot for advice on talking to his mom. The bot — portrayed by a real actress — starts with thoughtful guidance before pivoting into an ad for a fictional cougar dating site called "Golden Encounters" that connects "sensitive cubs with roaring cougars." The man stares in bewilderment. Cut to tagline.

"Violation" — 30 seconds, first quarter

A skinny guy at an outdoor gym asks how to get a six-pack. The AI starts coaching him before swerving into a pitch for height-boosting insoles marketed to "short kings." Dr. Dre's "What's the Difference" kicks in on the beat.

Two additional ads — "Treachery" (a student getting jewelry ads mid-essay feedback) and "Deception" (a female entrepreneur pitched a payday loan during a business plan review) — were released online only.

Anthropic's CCO Sasha De Marigny explained the thinking: "Technology can be a bicycle for the mind. By keeping Claude free of advertising incentives, the only thing it's optimizing for is helping you do your best thinking."

The ads were funny. They were also, unmistakably, about OpenAI.

The Context: Ads Are Actually Coming to ChatGPT

Three weeks before the Super Bowl, on January 16, 2026, OpenAI officially announced it would begin testing advertisements within ChatGPT for free and low-cost tier users in the United States.

The details:

  • Ads appear at the bottom of ChatGPT's responses, clearly labeled as sponsored content
  • Based on the current conversation — ask about laptops, see a laptop ad
  • Free tier and ChatGPT Go ($8/month) users see ads
  • Plus ($20/month), Pro ($200/month), Team, and Enterprise subscribers do not see ads
  • No ads appear near conversations about health, mental health, politics, or other sensitive topics
  • Users under 18 never see ads

This wasn't OpenAI's first brush with ads. In December 2025, paying ChatGPT Pro subscribers noticed "app suggestions" that looked suspiciously like advertisements — including a Peloton recommendation. Chief Research Officer Mark Chen disabled the feature after the backlash, admitting "anything that feels like an ad needs to be handled with care, and we fell short."

Internal documents reportedly project $1 billion in free-user ad revenue starting in 2026, growing to $25 billion by 2029. Anthropic's Super Bowl campaign took aim at exactly this trajectory.

Sam Altman Fires Back

Sam Altman responded on X the same day Anthropic released the ads — and he did not hold back.

He acknowledged the ads were "funny" and said he "laughed." Then came the counterpunch:

"But I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we won't do exactly this; we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them."

"Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can't pay for subscriptions."

"Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI — they block companies they don't like from using their coding product (including us)... One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own. It is a dark path."

OpenAI CMO Kate Rouch followed up with her own broadside: "Real betrayal isn't ads. It's control. Anthropic thinks powerful AI should be tightly controlled in small rooms in San Francisco and Davos."

Anthropic didn't respond publicly. At the World Economic Forum a month earlier, CEO Dario Amodei had already framed their position: the company doesn't "need to maximize engagement for a billion free users because we're in some death race with some other large player."

As Inc. Magazine put it: "Anthropic's 'dishonest' ads clearly struck a nerve with Sam Altman. That was the point."

OpenAI's Super Bowl Ad: A Different Tone

OpenAI took a completely different approach with its own 60-second spot, "You Can Just Build Things," airing at the end of the first quarter. Produced by Doomsday Entertainment, the ad traced the history of computing — from a child tracing a cobweb, through classroom notebooks and early code, a Linux DVD sliding into an old computer, to modern robotics and Codex-powered development.

No corporate feud. No competitor shots. Just a quiet, aspirational message: "We build the tools. You build the future."

OpenAI also ran regional "Real Stories" spots — documentary-style ads featuring everyday people using ChatGPT to build things — in New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Las Vegas, and other major markets. The estimated ad spend was roughly $14 million, consistent with their 2025 Super Bowl debut.

Every AI Ad That Aired

Here's the complete roster of AI-related commercials during Super Bowl LX:

Company Product Length Angle
Anthropic Claude 60s + 30s Ad-free AI pledge (attacked ChatGPT ads)
OpenAI Codex 60s + regional History of building; aspirational
Google Gemini 60s Mom and son design new home with Gemini
Meta Oakley AI Glasses Two 30s Athletes with AI glasses (Spike Lee, Marshawn Lynch)
Amazon Alexa+ 60s Chris Hemsworth vs "AI is out to get me" dark comedy
GenSpark AI Work Platform Two 30s Matthew Broderick reprises Ferris Bueller persona
Wix Harmony AI In-game AI website builder via natural language
AI.com AI Agent Platform 30s (Q4) Website crashed from traffic surge
Svedka Vodka (AI-generated) 30s First "primarily" AI-generated national SB spot
Ramp AI Spend Management In-game Brian Baumgartner uses AI to "multiply" himself

At $8 million per 30-second spot (with premium placements exceeding $10 million), the AI industry collectively spent well over $100 million on Super Bowl airtime alone — before production costs.

The Deeper Question: Should AI Have Ads?

Strip away the Super Bowl spectacle and there's a genuinely important debate here.

OpenAI's argument is straightforward: ads fund free access to AI for people who can't afford subscriptions. Restricting AI to paid users is elitist. As Altman put it: "We need to bring AI to billions of people who can't pay for subscriptions."

Anthropic's argument is equally simple: AI conversations are too personal for advertising. People share health concerns, business problems, relationship struggles, and creative ideas with AI chatbots. Inserting commercial incentives into that relationship corrupts the AI's ability to help you think clearly.

Both arguments have merit. But the execution matters enormously.

When you ask a chatbot for laptop recommendations and a laptop ad appears below the answer, is the recommendation influenced by the advertiser? OpenAI says no — ads will "never" influence responses. But as TechPolicy.Press wrote: "Unlike banner ads on a webpage, ads in conversational AI can be woven invisibly into the fabric of conversation itself, making it virtually impossible to detect."

Senator Ed Markey noticed too. On January 22, he sent letters to seven AI company CEOs — including both Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei — demanding answers by February 12 on how they'll protect users from manipulation in ad-supported AI.

Can Anthropic keep the ad-free promise? AdWeek expressed skepticism, comparing it to Netflix's once-absolute "no ads" stance — which the company eventually abandoned. But there's a key difference: Anthropic's revenue hit $9 billion in 2025 (up from $1 billion a year earlier) and is projected to reach $18 billion in 2026 — all without a single ad dollar. When 85% of your revenue comes from enterprise contracts, you don't need to monetize free users.

Who "Won"?

In the ad industry's post-game analysis, no one declared a clear winner — but the consensus was revealing:

  • Anthropic won the narrative. Their ads generated the most press coverage, the most social media conversation, and Sam Altman's reaction only amplified the message. When your competitor spends an afternoon publicly arguing about your commercial, the ad worked.
  • OpenAI won on product positioning. The Codex ad was substantive and aspirational — no competitor shots, just a story about building. It made Codex feel inevitable rather than defensive.
  • Viewers got fatigued. By the time AI.com's fourth-quarter spot aired (crashing their website from traffic), many viewers were done. "If I see one more AI commercial I might snap" was a representative sentiment. Consumer surveys showed mostly negative feelings about AI ad saturation.

The "AI Bowl" comparison to 2022's infamous "Crypto Bowl" is the most telling signal. When every company in an industry floods the same event with ads, the messaging blurs together. Variety noted that "all AI ads struggled to differentiate their products."

What This Means for the Rest of 2026

Three days before the Super Bowl, on February 5, both Anthropic and OpenAI released their most powerful AI models — Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.3-Codex — within 20 minutes of each other. The combined announcement triggered a $285 billion selloff in software stocks that Wall Street is calling the "SaaSpocalypse."

Same-day model launches. Competing Super Bowl ads. Stock market crashes. Public feuds on X.

The AI industry isn't building toward a climactic moment. It's already here. And if Super Bowl LX proved anything, it's that the competition between these companies is no longer just about who builds the best model — it's about who wins the story.

Anthropic is betting that story is trust. OpenAI is betting it's access. The next twelve months will tell us which bet pays off.

Sources