AI ad wars hit the Super Bowl, with Claude calling out ChatGPT on live TV. That began a very public turf fight.
The Super Bowl is already done and dusted, but one of the players refuses to budge from the spotlight. It’s the fact that AI companies bought airtime to promote themselves- and throw shade at each other.
During the game, Anthropic dropped an ad featuring Claude directly calling out ChatGPT for “hallucinating facts” and “making stuff up.” That’s not subtle. That’s not coy. That’s open conflict on the biggest advertising stage in the world. And yes, people on Reddit noticed. Many found it funny. Many found it desperate.
First, this is AI stepping out of the technical lab and into the cultural pasture. It’s no longer about research papers or developer demos. It’s about brand identity and market positioning. These models are becoming consumer products, and their makers think they can win hearts, or at least eyeballs, with Super Bowl spots.
Second, the tone matters. Claude’s ad didn’t just advertise a product. It attacked a rival. That is unusual in tech- especially for AI. Startup marketing generally leans toward being polished or aspirational. But this was in-your-face, signaling that we’re moving from AI as wonder tech to AI as a competitive marketplace.
And third, it exposes just how muddled the message around these tools still is.
We don’t have universal definitions of what “accurate” means in gen AI. We don’t have standardized benchmarks for hallucinations or reliability. Yet here are two major players battling it out on national TV, betting that consumers care and will choose sides.
This was not just advertising. It was positioning- for dominance, not just awareness. And that tells you something about where this industry thinks it’s headed: branding wars, not just capability wars.
We can argue about whether the ads were smart or embarrassing. What matters is that AI is now a consumer spectacle, not a back-end curiosity. And once your product becomes theatre, the rules change fast.
