{"slug": "advertising-isnt-the-answer-to-anthropics-hard-questions", "title": "Advertising isn’t the answer to Anthropic’s hard questions", "summary": "Anthropic released a new commercial that juxtaposes tough questions about AI trust, job loss, and societal impact with optimistic visions of the technology's potential, created by ad agency Mother London. The ad reflects the company's ongoing dilemma of balancing serious concerns about AI risks with its own rapid development, as CEO Dario Amodei has warned about software vulnerabilities and called for a potential pause in frontier AI development. The campaign includes a website featuring questions from over 120,000 people worldwide.", "body_md": "Anthropic’s newest commercial begins with a sharp piano note, and what sounds like recordings of people asking tough questions of our current moment navigating [artificial intelligence](https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence).\n\n“Can AI be trusted? Who’s going to hit the brakes if we need to? How do we really ensure what we’re aiming to achieve really does benefit the majority of people? If it ends up taking almost all of the jobs, then what does it mean to work?”\n\nThen about halfway through, the questions shift to reflect a more optimistic point of view. “Could AI help people stop feeling misunderstood? Could AI help me build more connections in the community? Can AI help me be a better teacher and a better mom? Maybe it will cure some great things, things we’re not even at the cusp of understanding yet. . . . What if we started to be more human again?”\n\nCreated by the ad agency Mother London, the spot is a clear attempt to walk the fine line we’re all walking when it comes to AI and our own use of large language models (LLMs). It’s asking tough questions about trust, job loss, and societal impact, then juxtaposing it with more inspirational questions about how this technology may not be our end but a salvation.\n\nThese are compelling questions, and ones we should all ask ourselves every time we turn to ChatGPT or Claude for a recipe, fitness advice, or detailed character breakdown of * WKRP in Cincinnati*. But the fact it’s coming from one of the companies leading us down this road at breakneck speed is feeling a bit rich for many. As\n\nIn May, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, warned that artificial intelligence has created a narrow window for the world’s tech firms, governments, and banks to fix tens of thousands of software vulnerabilities found by his company’s latest model Mythos. Then [in a June blog post,](https://www.anthropic.com/institute/recursive-self-improvement) the company wrote, “We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause [frontier AI development](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-new-ai-executive-order-drastically-shifts-the-administrations-stance-on-the-tech/) to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.”\n\nThis puts these new AI brands in a Catch-22 dilemma. Make an ad too fun and it trivializes all these serious issues. Make it too self-serious and you’re accused of being disingenuous. This is not a problem advertising alone can fix.\n\nBack in February, [I called the dueling AI brands of ChatGPT and Claude the new cola wars](https://www.fastcompany.com/91488161/the-new-cola-wars-are-upon-us-but-this-time-its-ai). Claude’s ads poking fun at OpenAI introducing an ad tier to ChatGPT went on to win the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions in June.\n\nThis helped position Claude as the good guys of AI, or at least an AI model for people who don’t want advertising in their LLM answers. That “good guy” move was compounded when the company [sued the Trump administration in March](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7k7zdd0zo) after it labeled the company a supply chain risk, and OpenAI swept in to claim its [own government contract](https://www.fastcompany.com/91502961/openais-pentagon-deal-once-again-calls-sam-altmans-credibility-into-question).\n\nThe challenge in self-identifying as the “better” choice in a divisive category like AI is that it becomes the baseline for judgement for any advertising that follows. That means anything Anthropic creates has the potential to feel pandering, or trivial, depending on your personal relationship to the technology.\n\nAnthropic’s campaign includes [a website](https://claude.com/hard-questions) where you can listen to questions that people around the world have posed to Anthropic through the brand’s own public research over the past year. The company said it has input from more than 120,000 people through large-scale surveys, focus groups and analysis of anonymized Claude usage. It also polled more than 52,000 people in the U.S., and surveyed about 81,000 Claude users across 159 countries and 70 languages. Neither Anthropic or Mother London responded to a request for comment by publication.\n\nThe [negative reaction to the new spot](https://www.aol.com/articles/world-cup-fans-slam-unbearable-105936000.html) is not based in the ad itself. Just as billionaire investor Mark Cuban pointed out in [a June 25th social post](https://x.com/mcuban/status/2070211760196587534) that the anger at AI companies around data centers isn’t just about data centers.\n\nCuban outlined the problem that goes back to some pretty basic brand fundamentals, and a potential solution. Every company action is a brand statement. Not just AI companies, but the impact of how companies are using AI more broadly.\n\n[One report said that AI was cited as the reason for 43% of U.S. job cuts in May](https://www.challengergray.com/blog/challenger-report-may-job-cuts-rise-16-from-april-highest-may-total-since-2020/). Layoffs, and the fear of more, combined with the proposed data center builds and the resources required for them, have soured on many of these brands in a way mere advertising can’t fix.\n\n“Until those running the big LLMs understand this and start a community tour, not to explain the benefits of AI, it’s too late for that, but to help towns and cities that may be impacted by job losses (and I’m a believer [there] will be . . . net gains in a few years), this battle is only going to get more intense, and let me tell you now, no matter how much money you pay to buy politicians and races, you will lose,” Cuban wrote. “One thing I have learned is being hated is not good for business.”\n\nIn a category like this, there are always plenty of haters and fans. But this isn’t soda or snacks. Anthropic, and any other AI company for that matter, could do far worse than Cuban’s community tour idea. It might even make for a great ad.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/advertising-isnt-the-answer-to-anthropics-hard-questions", "canonical_source": "https://www.fastcompany.com/91572895/advertising-isnt-the-answer-to-anthropics-hard-questions", "published_at": "2026-07-14 17:54:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-14 18:47:27.016737+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-safety", "ai-policy", "large-language-models"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "Mother London", "Dario Amodei", "Claude", "ChatGPT", "OpenAI", "Cannes Lions", "Trump administration"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/advertising-isnt-the-answer-to-anthropics-hard-questions", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/advertising-isnt-the-answer-to-anthropics-hard-questions.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/advertising-isnt-the-answer-to-anthropics-hard-questions.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/advertising-isnt-the-answer-to-anthropics-hard-questions.jsonld"}}