Every emerging technology era has its own marketing delusion. For crypto, it was “number go up.” For web3, it was “community.” For the metaverse, it was… whatever Zuck was doing in those legless Horizon Worlds demos. Now AI has entered the chat, and the fantasy is that the most technically powerful model will win. Cute. Incorrect, but cute.

Because the real battle won’t be happening on leaderboards or benchmarks or your favourite cherry-picked eval.

Ask any smartphone manufacturer desperately pretending their cameras aren’t all the same.

So here we are, watching a new kind of corporate colosseum emerge, AI vs AI, battling for emotional territory before the tech converges. The product is neural nets. The differentiator is trust. The weapon is brand. And the irony is delicioussss: the tools we use for branding now have to do their own branding. The marketers have become the marketed-to.

Welcome to the battle of the brands.

OpenAI’s campaign with Isle of Any is basically a soft-focus handshake. Shot on film, drenched in warmth, practically begging you to exhale. Here’s ChatGPT gently folding itself into your life, whispering: Don’t worry. I’m here to help. Dinner recipes, study notes, a gentle co-pilot. It’s brand positioning as emotional ergonomics: “I fit where you already are.”

The strategy is clear: if AI is scary, make yours feel familiar, supportive and approachable. The friend who never makes you feel stupid for asking how long chicken lasts in the fridge.

ChatGPT is branding itself as the mass-market operating system for everyday intelligence. Not the smartest model, but the safest pair of hands.

Then Claude barges in like the gifted kid who learned Blender at age eight and built a lunar rover in their backyard for fun. Mother’s campaign is nothing short of art school brilliance. The message: Think higher. Think weirder. Keep thinking.

It leans into complexity, uniqueness and depth, stating that Claude is the AI for people who want edge. For people who believe creativity should be a collaborative effort of wit and craft. And those who romanticise intelligence the way others romanticise leather-bound books.

This is premium positioning: aspiration through capability, mystique through novelty. Claude is not “easy” but Claude is “worth it.”

Right now, perception gaps are everything. When categories are still forming, the brand that claims the emotional real estate first is the one who sets the rules.

ChatGPT is staking out warmth, safety, universality. Claude is staking out intellect, depth, distinctiveness.

Both are smart moves. Neither is about IQ points.

Consumers won’t pick the AI that scored one percent higher on some academic benchmark they do not understand and do not care about.

They’ll pick the AI they trust, that feels aligned with their identity, not just their tasks. The AI that makes them feel something, whether that’s safe, inspired, understood or powerful.

In other words, it’s the same battle consumer brands fight every day.

The real moat in AI may not be multimodal reasoning or long-context memory, but perhaps emotional positioning. Personality architecture. Soft power.

The winning AI will not be that which can write you the tightest Python. It will be the one you trust to whisper in your ear while doing it.

This is why we’re suddenly seeing entire brand campaigns from companies that used to laugh at the idea of “advertising.” This is no longer a capability race, but a hearts-and-minds race.

The same rules that shaped Coke vs Pepsi, Nike vs Adidas, Apple vs Microsoft, Netflix vs HBO… Those rules are now shaping AI.

-Sophie Randell, Writer