It feels like everyone who created the ad spots for this year’s Super Bowl with generative AI failed to make generative AI useful or worth getting excited about. Although we’ve seen plenty of AI-generated ads before (in previous Super Bowls, no less), this year’s event was even more full of them. This is partly because image and video creation models have become more sophisticated over the past year – though still low-level compared to what humans create, but for many brands they have improved enough that they are now comfortable attaching their names to AI-derived footage.
Additionally, using Zen AI is much cheaper and faster, which is convenient when a 30-second ad spot in this year’s Super Bowl cost between $8-$10 million. With traditionally produced commercials from past Super Bowls, you can really see how spending money on production ultimately resulted in commercials that felt more premium than the commercials typically seen on television. But this year, many of the ads were undeniably cheesy and of poor quality. Here are some of them.
The worst example of this was the Artlist ad. The main thrust of Israeli creative firm Artlist’s ad (which aired only in New York and Los Angeles) is that anyone can produce Super Bowl-worthy video footage using the company’s suite of production tools. It even went so far as to brag that Artlist had purchased its Super Bowl spot about a week in advance and only spent five days producing the ad. It would be impressive if Artlist’s final product actually looked like something that would motivate average consumers to use these devices.
Instead, the ad features the same tropes that have convinced people to view AI-generated videos as substandard. Instead of giving a concise, compelling, cohesive Any type of story, the advertisement is a series of very short clips of animals doing strange things, interspersed with voice-overs. There is nothing new in this. And considering how much carelessness there is already in the world, the whole thing feels more like a threat than a promise of good things to come.
For its appearance at the Super Bowl, vodka brand Svedka – which is owned by the Sazerac Company – revived its old fembot cgi characterGave her a new male-presenting partner called Brobot, and dropped the android duo into an ad that was almost entirely built with Gen AI. Although Fembot has previously been part of the larger Svedka brand and has always looked the same… everything about the Brobot character feels like a copy me, robotThe character of Sonny, played by Alan Tudyk in the 2004 film.
talking to hollywood reporter Before the Super Bowl, Sazerac’s chief marketing officer, Sarah Saunders, said that using AI to create ads didn’t actually save the company that much time or money. Rather, Sazerac felt that an AI aesthetic could be thematically resonant for the vodka brand, and the company believed the ad could convey a message that is “ultimately pro-human.”
The story of the ad is pretty straightforward: two robots show up at a club, remove vodka bottles from their bodies, and get drunk while standing in a crowd of awkwardly dancing, AI-generated humans. We have to understand that alcohol helps machines to be free in a very human way. But what stands out most in the ad is the way the Brobot starts short-circuiting after drinking a drink, which immediately starts spilling down its chassis because the mouth of the machine is not connected to the internal system of pipes meant to process liquids.
Although Sazerac says Brobot’s malfunction appeared to be intentional, it looks a lot like the kind of accidental video output that AI models are known to produce without being explicitly prompted to do so. In the sequence it seems as if the Brobot character is breaking himself by interacting with Svedka’s product, which is not exactly the kind of message alcohol companies are supposed to lean on. Sazerac may do its best to present the Swedka ad as a win for its vodka brand identity, but the most pro-humanity thing the company could have done in this situation would have been to hire more humans to develop a better idea.
Clearly, we’re not alone in our feelings about Gen AI’s less-polished production process, which is why it was even riskier for these brands to participate this year. There is so much hostility in the air that people now assume that the strange sightings are AI-generated, even if careless editing is actually to blame.
One of the most star-studded Super Bowl commercials was Jurassic Park-Themed Advertisement For Comcast’s Xfinity Network that digitally reduced Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. While people on social media have commented that the questionable CGI and de-agingAI looks like a slope“Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Lola VFX is actually credited To create visual effects – the latter of which has been digitally reducing the age of actors in films for years X-Men: The Last Stand And The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Dunkin’s ad spot failed due to the same speculation regarding the use of AI. “Good Will Dunkin’The ad features older versions of Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc and other stars, parodying the ’90s sitcom, but the strangely smooth skin and unnatural facial movements have divided opinion online about whether AI was used to enhance the actors’ appearance by three decades. Sure, the ad has gone viral because people are playing “spot the AI Super Bowl ads,” but none of those conversations are about coffee or pastries.
Creating computer-generated effects usually involves some machine learning processes, but these are usually embedded with creative software editing tools rather than the text-to-video models associated with AI video. (We’ve contacted Dunkin’, ILM and Lola VFX to ask what equipment was used to create the Xfinity and Dunkin’ ads.)
The use of AI has also contributed to the rivalry between companies, as seen in Super Bowl ad for Pepsi Zero Sugar. The ad, set to Queen’s “I Want to Break Free”, features a CGI polar bear (traditionally the Coca-Cola mascot) in distress about preferring Pepsi in a blind taste test. It ends with the message that consumers “deserve taste” – possibly a jab at Coca-Cola’s controversial AI-generated holiday ads. in a statement to adweekPepsi marketing VP Gustavo Reyna said it’s important to have a human touch in advertising. Reyna said, “If there’s something we care about and believe in, it’s our people, our talent, and the art and creativity of our partners.” Even if it is understood that Pepsi, unlike Coca-Cola, is not using AI, this is questionable due to the “animals doing weird things” association so casually cultivated by Artlist.
This latest crop of Generation AI ads aimed, in part, to normalize the technology through attack. But the purpose of a truly effective Super Bowl ad is to create a cultural moment that is positive and exciting to connect with your product. Instead, the ads have made people question: Is this AI? Does it look exactly like AI? Does it even matter now?
