OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has taken a public dig at Anthropic, dismissing the rival AI company's new advertising campaign as unconvincing while accusing it of quietly restricting access to its Claude models. The remarks, posted on X on July 14, mark the latest flashpoint in an increasingly public rivalry between the two AI labs, whose founders have clashed repeatedly since Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei left OpenAI in 2020.
Reacting to Anthropic's newly launched ad, titled "There's Hope in Hard Questions," Altman wrote that he thought the campaign was satire and joked that he kept checking whether the account posting it was a parody handle rather than Anthropic's official one. He followed up with a sharper jab at the company's product practices, saying that asking hard questions is fine only if Anthropic decides a user is "worthy enough" to avoid being silently downgraded or denied access altogether.
Industry observers noted that Altman's comment likely referred to Anthropic's recent rollout troubles with its frontier model, Fable 5, which shipped with guardrails routing sensitive queries on cybersecurity, biology and chemistry to weaker backup models. Those same guardrails reportedly throttled the model's performance whenever it detected use for AI development work, a measure meant to guard against distillation attacks where rivals train cheaper models off a stronger one's outputs.
Altman's remarks were directed at Anthropic's latest advertisement, "There's Hope in Hard Questions," part of its Keep Thinking campaign. The commercial explores AI's societal impact through scenes involving issues such as screen time, facial recognition and trust in AI.
This is not the first time Altman has criticised the campaign. He previously called Anthropic's Super Bowl 60 advertisements "deceptive" after they satirised AI advertising, following OpenAI's announcement that it was testing ads on ChatGPT.
The exchange is the latest in a series of public disagreements between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei since Amodei left OpenAI in 2020. Altman's criticism comes as both companies compete in the AI market and reportedly prepare for public listings.
Both firms confidentially filed IPO paperwork last month, according to reports. Anthropic has also reported a higher annual revenue run rate than OpenAI, reflecting growing competition between the two AI companies.
