As ChatGPT has bitten the bullet and announced that it will bring advertising into its app in the coming weeks, rivals are losing no time to use this to their advantage.
Anthropic announced today that Claude will remain ad-free, staking out clear competitive ground as OpenAI prepares to introduce advertisements to ChatGPT. In a blog post titled “Claude is a space to think,” the company outlined why it believes advertising is fundamentally incompatible with its vision for AI assistance.
“We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests,” Anthropic stated. “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.”
The company drew a distinction between how users interact with search engines or social media—where they expect a mixture of organic and sponsored content—and AI conversations, which are “meaningfully different.” According to Anthropic, “The format is open-ended; users often share context and reveal more than they would in a search query. This openness is part of what makes conversations with AI valuable, but it’s also what makes them susceptible to influence in ways that other digital products are not.”
Anthropic’s analysis of Claude conversations revealed that “an appreciable portion involve topics that are sensitive or deeply personal—the kinds of conversations you might have with a trusted advisor.” The company argued that “the appearance of ads in these contexts would feel incongruous—and, in many cases, inappropriate.”
Incentive Misalignment
The company expressed concern that advertising would introduce conflicting incentives. It offered a concrete example: “A user mentions they’re having trouble sleeping. An assistant without advertising incentives would explore the various potential causes—stress, environment, habits, and so on—based on what might be most insightful to the user. An ad-supported assistant has an additional consideration: whether the conversation presents an opportunity to make a transaction.”
Anthropic warned that “users shouldn’t have to second-guess whether an AI is genuinely helping them or subtly steering the conversation towards something monetizable.”
Even ads that don’t directly influence responses would be problematic, the company said, because they “would introduce an incentive to optimize for engagement—for the amount of time people spend using Claude and how often they return. These metrics aren’t necessarily aligned with being genuinely helpful. The most useful AI interaction might be a short one, or one that resolves the user’s request without prompting further conversation.”
The company acknowledged that “not all advertising implementations are equivalent” and that more transparent approaches might avoid some concerns. However, it noted that “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.”
Will Support User-initiated Commerical Interactions
While ruling out ads, Anthropic indicated it will support commercial interactions when user-initiated. The company expressed interest in “agentic commerce, where Claude acts on a user’s behalf to handle a purchase or booking end to end” and plans to build features that “enable our users to find, compare, or buy products, connect with businesses, and more—when they choose to do so.”
The company emphasized a key design principle: third-party interactions “should be initiated by the user (where the AI is working for them) rather than an advertiser (where the AI is working, at least in part, for someone else).”
“Today, whether someone asks Claude to research running shoes, compare mortgage rates, or recommend a restaurant for a special occasion, Claude’s only incentive is to give a helpful answer,” Anthropic stated. “We’d like to preserve that.”
Business Model and Strategy
Anthropic’s business model relies on enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions rather than advertising. Having no ads in its consumer-facing chatbot makes particular sense for Anthropic given its current market position. The company lags ChatGPT significantly in consumer adoption—OpenAI’s chatbot reportedly has around 800 million users—and much of Claude’s usage comes through API access by developers and businesses rather than direct consumer interaction. An advertising model would generate far less revenue for Anthropic than it would for ChatGPT’s massive user base, making the competitive differentiation of remaining ad-free a savvier play.
The move could help Anthropic attract users who are put off by ChatGPT’s introduction of ads, positioning Claude as a premium, distraction-free alternative for users engaged in deep work, complex problem-solving, or sensitive conversations. And ChatGPT, which has been forced to run ads to foot the bill of serving its 800 million users, now has the additional headache of rivals looking to swoop in and steal its user base with a no-ads promise.