Anthropic cements its position as the not-OpenAI with no-ads pledge

Anthropic has taken the high road by committing to keep its Claude AI model family free of advertising.

"There are many good places for advertising," the company announced on Wednesday. "A conversation with Claude is not one of them."

Rival OpenAI has taken a different path and is planning to present promotional material to its free and Go tier customers.

With its abjuration of sponsorship, Anthropic is leaning into its messaging that principles matter, a market position reinforced by recent reports about the company's clash with the Pentagon over safeguards. 

"We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users' interests," the company said. "So we've made a choice: Claude will remain ad-free. 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."

That choice may ...