Anthropic will not put ads in conversations with its AI assistant Claude.

It wants ads nowhere near its AI-generated content. “Even ads that don’t directly influence an AI model’s responses and instead appear separately within the chat window would compromise what we want Claude to be: a clear space to think and work,” it announced on its website.

The company chose to go down this pathway as its research showed many AI conversations were of a delicate or personal nature, and it would be inappropriate to taint responses with ads. Likewise, when using AI in complex technical tasks such as software engineering projects, ads would be incongruous, it said.

Rival OpenAI sees it differently, and now plans to embed advertising in ChatGPT, something that CEO Sam Altman had previously said would be a “last resort”. It’s an indication that AI companies are still trying to balance the cost of development with the provision of service to their users.

Anthropic made its position clear. “We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests. 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,” the company said.

In short, “There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,” it said.