How Anthropic Is Winning the AI Platform Marketing War by Being Less Evil

Anthropic is winning the AI platform marketing war. In the quest to become the dominant category-defining player, OpenAI had the largest lead with ChatGPT. Then they abandoned their non-profit business model, integrated advertising and compromised their original moral principles. Now Anthropic is getting aggressive in their bid to promote themselves as a more responsible alternative. With their highly effective Super Bowl ads attacking OpenAI with humor to their latest high-stakes stand against the Pentagon, the message is consistent: we are the only AI company that isn't being reckless and is standing for something.

"Anthropic has argued that it was asking for reasonable assurances that its model would not be used for surveillance of Americans or in autonomous weapons, such as drone operations, that did not involve human oversight. The Pentagon wants all artificial intelligence contracts to stipulate that the military can use the models for any lawful purpose."

Whether you trust these principles to last or not, the message is winning right now. Fast Company noted that their branding and actions are burnishing their reputation while TechCrunch suggests that against the Pentagon in a "serious game of chicken, Anthropic may not be the one to blink first." I realize this may seem like a strange brand for me to be complimenting, given they agreed last year to pay a record $1.5 billion to publishers and authors for illegally stealing more than 500,000 copyrighted books to train their models (including several of mine).

The thing is, it's pretty clear that all the other platforms also ingested data illegally and often scraped the content of books as well. Yet as of today Anthropic is the only AI platform that I currently have at least a chance of receiving some compensation from—which is kind of the point. In a world where we have lots of bad actors ready to manipulate us while stealing our data, any company that leads with principles will certainly stand out.