Anthropic has announced it will not introduce advertising into conversations with its AI assistant Claude, arguing that ads would undermine trust and conflict with its goal of building a tool for focused thinking and work.
“There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,” the company said in a blog post.
“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,” it added.
The company said ads—whether embedded in responses or displayed alongside conversations—would create incentives misaligned with user interests. “We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests,” Anthropic said, adding that users should not have to question whether recommendations are influenced by commercial motives.
Anthropic said conversations with AI assistants differ from search engines or social media, where users expect a mix of sponsored and organic content. “The format is open-ended; users often share context and reveal more than they would in a search query,” the company said, noting that many conversations involve personal, sensitive, or complex topics.
The company warned that advertising could introduce risks at a time when the effects of AI systems are still being studied. “Our understanding of how models translate the goals we set them into specific behaviours is still developing,” it said, adding that ad-based incentives could lead to “unpredictable results.”
Meanwhile, OpenAI has introduced ads in ChatGPT for free users and its low-cost “Go” tier in the US. The ads appear at the bottom of responses when a sponsored product or service is relevant to the user’s conversation. OpenAI has said the ads will be clearly labelled and separated from organic answers, and users will be able to dismiss them or see why a particular ad is shown.
Anthropic, in contrast, pointed to conflicts that could arise in practical scenarios. “Users shouldn’t have to second-guess whether an AI is genuinely helping them or subtly steering the conversation towards something monetisable,” the company said.
Instead, Anthropic said it will continue to rely on paid subscriptions and enterprise contracts. “We generate revenue through enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions, and we reinvest that revenue into improving Claude for our users,” the company said.
The company said it plans to expand access through education programs, government pilots, and discounted access for nonprofits, while continuing to invest in smaller models for free users. It also said it may explore lower-cost subscription tiers and regional pricing.
Anthropic said it remains open to supporting commerce when initiated by users, including through agent-based purchasing and third-party integrations. “All third-party interactions will be grounded in the same overarching design principle: they should be initiated by the user,” the company said.
The company compared Claude to offline tools used for thinking. “Open a notebook, pick up a well-crafted tool, or stand in front of a clean chalkboard, and there are no ads in sight,” it said. “We think Claude should work the same way.”
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