Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude Ad-free, Calls AI Conversations a 'Space To Think'

Anthropic said today that its AI assistant Claude will not carry advertising of any kind -- no sponsored links next to conversations, no advertiser influence on the model's responses, and no unsolicited third-party product placements -- calling Claude a "space to think" that should remain free of commercial interruption. The announcement comes days after Anthropic's chief rival, OpenAI, announced plans to bring ads to some of its ChatGPT offerings.

Anthropic said its internal analysis of Claude conversations found that a significant share involve sensitive or deeply personal topics. An advertising-based model would also create incentives to optimize for engagement and time spent rather than usefulness, Anthropic said, noting that the most helpful AI interaction might be a short one that doesn't prompt further conversation.

Anthropic generates revenue from enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions. The company said it is exploring agentic commerce -- Claude handling a purchase or booking on a user's behalf -- but stressed that all such interactions should be user-initiated, not advertiser-driven. Anthropic has also brought AI tools to educators in over 60 countries and said it may consider lower-cost subscription tiers and regional pricing.

The company will have partners

[Anonymous Coward]

The company will have partners and investor interests and there is bound to be a conversation about getting the AI to prioritize or recommend products and services from partners and sponsors and have input from investors on how users could be influenced.

I'm fairly certain this will happen with all AI. They will rank preferred interests higher.

That's awesome and I prefer Claude

[expresspotato]

I prefer the responses of Claude anyways. They're more complete, insightful and helpful. It's really helped me with dating and understanding who I am.

Re:That's awesome and I prefer Claude

[Zocalo]

Pardon the cynicism, but I remember Google claiming that they would "do no evil", yet here we are. I'll enjoy the ad-free Claude while it lasts, and hopefully that will be for a long time, but sooner or later I fully expect the desire for advertising dollars to trump any laudable claims they might be making today.

Re: That's awesome and I prefer Claude

[liqu1d]

Yeah it's complete bollocks. Doublespeak. There will be ads but they won't be overt. Recommending one product over another because they get a kickback.

Re:

[SScorpio]

Or just. "Sounds like things are going well. I recommend taking this new girl to Taco Bell where you can get the new chalupa double stack. Available for a limited time."

Re:

[martin-boundary]

Lieutenant Claude! Lieutenant Claude! I took my girl to Taco Bell like you suggested and she slapped me and now I'm ghosted! What do I do?

Re:

[geekmux]

Recommending one product over another because they get a kickback.

Nothing quite like the new AI fuckery, where geeky meatsacks pit the Ford vs. Chevy of marketing-bots against each other on a Friday night and grab the popcorn..

Re:

[SpinyNorman]

At the moment these companies are all trying to attract market share, and given that advertisements are unlikely to be popular the ones who hold out the longest (maybe because they can afford to) will be most successful.

For example, Google generates tons of cash outside of AI and can propably afford to provide free Gemini ChatBot indefinitely if they chose to, whereas for OpenAI ChatGPT is their primary source of revenue (with API services being second), so they may be somewhat compelled to add advertizing

Re:

[SlashbotAgent]

OK, you've piqued my interest.

How, or in what way, did Claude help with dating and self discovery?

Re:

[GoTeam]

How, or in what way, did Claude help with dating and self discovery?

Easy: "Dear Claude, what is the best treatment for wrist tendonitis"

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[angel'o'sphere]

Be careful!
You could start mixing up yourself with myself!

Re:

[martin-boundary]

That's right. The ones who think that are the investors.

And they're getting impatient for their promised profits.

Fantastic!

[SlashbotAgent]

We'll see if the can continue to resist the pull of the dark side.

Re:

[GoTeam]

We'll see if the can continue to resist the pull of the dark side.

Response from Anthropic: You underestimate my power!

Good intent but..

[Defraggle]

Enshittification is inevitable.
Capitalism demands it.

Re:

[GoTeam]

Enshittification is inevitable. Capitalism demands it.

Corporatocracy demands it

Like Google's Don't be Evil

[Koreantoast]

Kind of like Google with it's "Don't be evil" motto. Great in theory. You can resist for a while. However, it inevitably falls apart whether they are public or private. The masses have shown over and over again that they prefer free with ads to subscriptions. Even if they can make subscriptions work, the inevitable growth in costs will drive them to subscriptions with ads that we see streaming services hawking today. It is in the impossible position of resisting three powerful forces: the greed of corporate

Still opportunities

[bradley13]

I do occasionally use AI for shopping. If I ask for recommendations for some product, the AI would be free to collect some premium. Of course, the trick is not letting that influence the recommendation...

Re:

[SirSlud]

In what world is a seller compensating for referrals if it's demonstrably provable to the customer (and hence the seller) that the referral bonus in no way influences the recommendation - or even the pool of options the recommendation is singled out from - provided to the user?

2027: Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude AI-free

[greytree]

2027: Anthropic said today that its AI assistant Claude will not use AIs in any way, but due to the now incredibly high cost of energy, cooling, processors and RAM will instead rely on cheaper third-world people.

No promises

[Tony Isaac]

If you read the post, they don't really make promises. They talk about what "they want" Claude to be, but nowhere does it say they will "never" include ads. Even if it did, I wouldn't believe them for a minute. The pull of money is too strong.

For a price!

[Anonymous Coward]

For a platform that starts at $20, with the next price point jumping up to $100... and throttles usage like an ADHD intern... who needs ads? They'll give out just enough of their drug to get users hooked, then they'll pay anything! They don't need no stinkin' ads!

Seriously, I think they have a useful product, but it's clearly gated for rich bastard elitists. I'm not sure that's a winning strategy, considering other products are providing almost the same drug for free. Personally, I didn't even hit their Pr

Interesting and doomed

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

Translation: Interrupting people's writing with adverts, makes them think less and deliver less human thought and expression. Thus, we will not be pissing in our swimming pool, until the board of directors demands it.

While OpenAI is desperately trying to monetize everything they touch, for-profit Anthropic is protecting the environment. With profit motives, winner-take-all markets and "too big to care" cartels driving the technology, that will not be sustainable.

Bullshit. It's anything but ad free, and I pay.

[laxr5rs]

I pay for claude. What do I get every microsecond? A popup telling me I have x amount of time left and would I like to upgrade to Claudius Maximus or whatever. No, I don't want to. Thanks. And you can take your "non-ad" pop ups and uh ... [user's comment was striken from the record at this point].

Real Reason

[nick_davison]

Ads make sense for $20/mo services that might be able to make $10 in ad revenue and can sell the service for $12/mo if you choose ad supported.

But AI companies are currently burning $10 for every $1 in revenue. At some point those $60 services need to become $600/mo and the $200 services need to convince you to pay $2,000/mo. Something thatâ(TM)s likely doable when they actually can replace half a $15,000/mo developer.

But when youâ(TM)re paying $2,000/mo for the service, whoâ(TM)s going to to

Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude Ad-free!

[oldgraybeard]

Until they decide to start running ads!

Re:

[dysmal]

Why run ads when you can just charge a premium for the data you're harvesting? They'll have data which hasn't been tainted by ads which is arguably more valuable than the other services because of its purity.

Re:

[oldgraybeard]

even more revenue, and at the moment the entire AI market is defined by the Media and Sales and Marketing and their pretend Intelligence pitch because no one is even close to cognitive Intelligence.
What the media along with sales and marketing are calling AI is just multiple layers of probability based guessing, with pre guessing, the main guessing task and then post guess guessing to try and clean up the mistakes.