Is trust becoming the new battleground for AI?
For the past few years, AI companies have competed on one thing: capability. Faster models, bigger context windows and better reasoning have dominated the conversation. Anthropic's latest campaign suggests the race may be entering a new phase, one where trust matters just as much as technical performance.
For much of the last three years, the AI industry has sounded remarkably similar.
Every new model launch has promised better reasoning, faster responses, larger context windows or stronger benchmark scores. Whether it was OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or xAI, the conversation largely revolved around one question: whose model can do the most?
Anthropic's latest campaign feels like a noticeable change in direction.
Rather than spending 90 seconds explaining what Claude can do, the company has chosen to focus on something far less tangible: how people feel about AI in the first place. Its new film, There's Hope in Hard Questions, doesn't open with product features or technical demonstrations. Instead, it asks questions that many people have probably wondered themselves.
Can AI be trusted?
Who's going to hit the brakes if we need to?
Could AI help me become a better teacher, a better parent or a better friend?
It's a striking shift in tone, and one that raises an interesting question. As AI models become increasingly capable, is the real competition beginning to move away from performance and towards trust?
A very different kind of AI campaign
The campaign marks a noticeable departure from the way AI companies have typically marketed themselves.
Anthropic says the questions featured in the advert were gathered from more than 120,000 people across 159 countries and 70 languages, combining global surveys, focus groups, a US roadshow and anonymised Claude usage data. Alongside the film, the company has launched an ongoing initiative encouraging people to continue submitting questions, with a commitment to report publicly on what it learns.
Whether or not you like the advert itself, that's an unusual approach.
Most technology campaigns aim to reassure people by demonstrating confidence. Anthropic has taken the opposite route, acknowledging uncertainty and inviting the conversation instead.
It's worth remembering that this isn't happening in isolation either. Earlier this year, Anthropic won the Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix for its Super Bowl campaign positioning Claude as the AI assistant without advertising. At the time, many people interpreted it as a direct response to OpenAI's move into ads. This latest campaign feels less confrontational, but it's still carefully positioned around an area where Anthropic believes it can stand apart.
From capability to credibility
The AI industry is reaching an interesting point.
A couple of years ago, the biggest question was whether these models actually worked. Today, most of the leading large language models are capable of producing impressive results across writing, coding, research and analysis. While there are still meaningful technical differences between them, those differences are becoming harder for the average user to judge.
That's often when positioning starts to matter more.
Marketing history is full of examples where challenger brands have found success by owning a particular attribute rather than trying to compete on every front. Volvo became synonymous with safety. Patagonia built its reputation around environmental responsibility. Monzo positioned itself around transparency and simplicity in banking.
Anthropic appears to be making a similar play.
Rather than claiming Claude is the smartest AI on the market, it's attempting to become the company that's taking the public's concerns most seriously. Whether that ultimately becomes its defining characteristic remains to be seen, but it's a fascinating strategic decision.
The reaction tells its own story
Not everyone has been convinced.
The campaign has divided opinion across the AI industry, which is perhaps unsurprising given its subject matter. Some praised Anthropic for tackling questions that many technology companies prefer to avoid, while others felt the opening imagery, which includes scenes of surveillance, disaster and uncertainty, leaned too heavily into fear.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even joked on X that he'd initially assumed the advert was satire, a comment that quickly became part of the wider discussion around the campaign. Meanwhile, publications including TechCrunch questioned whether the film struck the right balance between acknowledging public concerns and amplifying them.
In some ways, though, that reaction reinforces the point.
Anthropic wasn't trying to launch another polished product advert. It was trying to start a conversation, and conversations are rarely unanimous.
Why this matters beyond AI
Whether you use Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or another AI assistant altogether, this campaign hints at a broader shift that extends well beyond the technology sector.
Consumers are asking more questions of the brands they buy from.
Where was this made?
How is my data being used?
Can I trust this recommendation?
What happens if something goes wrong?
According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust continues to play a major role in purchasing decisions, particularly in sectors where products or services feel complex or unfamiliar. As emerging technologies become part of everyday life, explaining how something works is only one part of the challenge. Convincing people that it has been built responsibly is becoming just as important.
We've already started to see this shift in other industries. Food brands are placing greater emphasis on ingredient transparency, financial services are investing heavily in customer education, and healthcare companies are increasingly explaining not just what they do but how they do it.
AI appears to be following the same path.
The next chapter of AI marketing?
It's tempting to see every new AI campaign as another chapter in the rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI.
There is certainly an element of competition here. Every major technology company is trying to define what makes its products different, and marketing will inevitably play a role in that.
At the same time, reducing this campaign to a swipe at a competitor risks missing the bigger picture.
For the first few years of the AI boom, companies competed on what their models could do. As those capabilities become increasingly sophisticated across the industry, the conversation may naturally shift towards questions that are harder to measure but arguably more important.
Who do people trust?
Who communicates openly when things go wrong?
Who feels most transparent about how their technology is being developed?
Those aren't technical questions. They're brand questions.
And they may prove to be some of the most important ones the AI industry has to answer over the next few years.
BlackCat's Take
Whether Anthropic's campaign is remembered as a marketing success is almost beside the point.
What's interesting is the shift in thinking behind it.
Instead of trying to win another round of the capability race, Anthropic appears to be betting that the next stage of AI competition will be fought on different ground. Not over who can build the smartest model, but over who people feel most comfortable using.
It's too early to know whether that strategy will pay off. Trust is much harder to build than a product feature, and even harder to measure. But if AI continues to become part of everyday life, it seems inevitable that people will ask more searching questions about the companies behind it.
If that's where the conversation is heading, this campaign may end up being remembered for something bigger than the advert itself. It may simply have recognised, earlier than most, that the future of AI marketing isn't just about capability.
It's about credibility.
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