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The ad during Sunday’s (Feb. 8) football championship slam’s OpenAI’s plan to sell advertisements on its ChatGPT chatbot, Reuters reported, characterizing the move as one of the largest public disputes between the big AI startups.

In the commercial, a skinny young man does pull-ups in a park, and asks fitness advice from a more muscular bystander. This man replies in a robotic fashion, hinting that this is a chatbot, and offers a personalized strength-training plan, as well as an ad for shoe inserts that help “short kings stand tall.”

And then the stinger: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” referring to Anthropic’s chatbot. The ad comes days after Anthropic said Claude would remain ad-free.

According to Reuters, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was unamused, calling the Anthropic commercial “deceptive” in a social media post.

“We’re not stupid,” Altman told the TBPN podcast Thursday (Feb. 5). “We respect our users, we understand that if we did something like what those ads depict, people will rightfully stop using our product.”

For its part, OpenAI will run a Super Bowl ad promoting its Codex software coding tool.

This will be Claude’s Super Bowl debut, the report added, with both companies vying for the attention of some 120 million people expected to watch the big game.

OpenAI has said it plans to test ads in ChatGPT, starting in the U.S. on the Free and Go tiers. The company aims to position these ads to sit below answers at the bottom of the user interface. They will also be clearly labeled and relate to the live conversation at hand. 

“This signals that as the industry’s economics tighten — with free usage exploding and massive infrastructure and operating costs — even the AI leader is shifting to a model that looks more like a content business,” PYMNTS wrote.

Other tech companies are moving in a similar direction. Meta, for example, has begun treating interactions with Meta AI as personalization data points that can shape the ads and content users encounter across in the company’s other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

“Ads are not a guaranteed revenue machine, though,” that report added. “Perplexity recently suspended the model it introduced in late 2024 of running sponsored follow-up questions — ads that flow into a user’s ongoing query. This approach appears to have failed or at least to have risked turning off too many users.”

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From athlete training and broadcast production to fan engagement and judging, AI systems are increasingly embedded in how the games are prepared for, experienced and evaluated.

Training Edge for Olympic Athletes

For elite athletes, micro-second gains often separate podium finishes from near misses. That reality is driving adoption of an AI-powered performance analysis tool developed through a collaboration between Google Cloud and U.S. Ski & Snowboard. The system uses computer vision and large language models to convert ordinary video footage into detailed biomechanical insights, allowing coaches and athletes to analyze rotations, takeoff angles, airtime and landings without specialized motion-capture equipment.

The technology has already influenced Olympic preparation. Halfpipe snowboarder Maddie Mastro, known for her signature “crippler” trick, used the AI system to identify subtle flaws in arm positioning during landings that were not apparent through traditional video review. By adjusting technique based on AI feedback, athletes can make data-backed refinements earlier in training cycles, reducing reliance on trial and error as competition approaches.

“Our collaboration with U.S. Ski & Snowboard is the blueprint for a global shift in how humans move, train, and recover, moving beyond historical data to provide athletes with near real-time, prescriptive coaching,” said Oliver Parker, vice president, global generative AI, Google Cloud, in a statement.

Beyond individual athletes, the tool signals a broader shift in how national teams approach training. Cloud-based AI allows performance analysis to happen faster, more consistently and at lower cost, potentially narrowing gaps between well-funded programs and those with fewer resources.

AI Powering the Olympic Digital Experience

AI at the 2026 Olympics isn’t limited to athlete performance. The technology has also been embedded into how the games are experienced by spectators, officials and broadcasters.

Alibaba Cloud has announced a suite of AI tools built on its Qwen large language model that will be integrated into the digital ecosystem of the Milano Cortina Games. These “Olympic AI Assistants” will be deployed on the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) global platforms to provide multilingual conversational support for fans seeking schedules, results and event information in real time via chat interfaces.

Beyond fan engagement, the same AI models will also support internal Olympic operations. On secure IOC portals, AI assistants will help National Olympic Committees access documents and guidelines through natural language queries, a first for LLMs in the Olympics’ digital infrastructure.

Alibaba’s AI initiatives also include enhanced broadcast technology. AI-powered replay systems promise faster, more insightful visual breakdowns of events across multiple sports, enabling broadcasters to deliver compelling, near-live replays that isolate athletes from complex backgrounds like snow or ice. This could help viewers better appreciate technique and speed in disciplines like freestyle skiing, figure skating and ice hockey.

From Subjective Calls to Objective Data

For sports where subjective evaluation plays a large role—such as skiing, snowboarding and figure skating—the IOC is exploring AI systems to support judges with more consistent, data-backed assessments.

According to The Conversation, AI systems being explored for Olympic judging focus on breaking down complex athletic movements into measurable components, offering officials a data-driven reference point in events where scoring has historically depended on human interpretation.

For example, AI systems can measure body angles, rotation speeds and airtime with precision that exceeds the human eye, flagging potential scoring issues or technical details that might otherwise be missed. These tools to augment human decision-making by offering unbiased metrics that reduce error and promote fairness in competitive outcomes.

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The company is working to support these third-party apps in CarPlay and plans to make this capability available to AI providers within months, according to the report.

Currently, Apple allows only its own assistant, Siri, as a voice-control option in CarPlay, the report said.

CarPlay users have been demanding the option to use third-party AI chatbots because Siri’s capabilities are limited to managing music playback, sending messages and handling navigation, per the report.

A third-party AI chatbot could do things such as providing restaurant recommendations when asked by the driver, the report said.

Apple did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

This report comes about two weeks after it was reported that Apple plans to use a custom AI model provided by Google to increase the capabilities of Siri, turning the digital assistant into an AI chatbot later this year.

The chatbot will be added to the operating systems of the iPhone, iPad and Mac. While Google will provide the AI model, Apple will design the user interface.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “GenAI and Voice Assistants: Adoption and Trust Across Generations” found that 60% of consumers believed voice assistants would become as smart and reliable as humans.

The report also found that millennials and bridge millennials were the most frequent users of voice-activated devices. Among each group, 32% of consumers used the devices.

Meanwhile, it was reported in November that Tesla is developing support for Apple CarPlay in its vehicles after ignoring calls from customers to add the software designed for vehicle infotainment systems. CarPlay is already supported by other car companies.

Apple began rolling out the next generation of CarPlay in May, saying it provides “the ultimate in-car experience” by deeply integrating with the vehicle.

“iPhone users love CarPlay, and it has transformed how people connect with their vehicles,” Bob Borchers, vice president of worldwide product marketing, said at the time in a press release. “With CarPlay Ultra, together with automakers, we are reimagining the in-car experience, making it even more unified and consistent.”

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With the new Material List Builder AI, these professionals can input details of the project and then receive a draft material list that they can edit before accepting, the company said in a Jan. 26 press release.

Once they accept the list, the AI tool will deliver product recommendations together with pricing and inventory availability, according to the release. They can then select and order the products they need for the project.

Master List Builder AI enables users to input the project details by typing them in natural language, using voice-to-text, pasting an existing list from other documents or leveraging one of the AI tool’s starter templates for common projects, the release said.

Once they’ve done this, and the AI tool has generated the product recommendation, users can save the material lists and return to them whenever they begin a similar job, per the release.

The tool is designed to save these professionals the time they would otherwise spend manually creating a list of products, searching for the right ones and comparing prices, according to the release.

Material List Builder AI is available to members of The Home Depot’s loyalty program for professionals, Pro Xtra, and can be accessed within the company’s Project Planning digital platform, per the release.

“Pros often tell us that their most valuable resource for any job is time, so we’re focused on delivering solutions that empower Pros to work smarter and faster,” Mike Rowe, executive vice president of Pro for The Home Depot, said in the release.

PYMNTS reported in August that The Home Depot told investors during an earnings call that contractors, remodelers and other pro customers make up the key base that will shape the company’s market positioning for the next decade.

In September, The Home Depot launched its Project Planning digital platform, saying it helps professional renovators, remodelers and specialty tradespeople plan, manage and execute complex projects. The company said the platform helps these pros manage their projects through a single supplier and collaborate with Home Depot staff in real time.