AI Ads Take Center Stage at Super Bowl LX as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Battle for Attention

Super Bowl LX ads: all AI everything

Super Bowl LX is nearly here, with the Seattle Seahawks taking on the New England Patriots. While Bad Bunny will be the star of the halftime show, AI could be the star of the commercial breaks, much like crypto was a few years ago. Last year's Super Bowl featured a Google Gemini ad that fumbled a Gouda cheese stat, and this year's game is already slated to include an ad for Anthropic's AI platform that takes jabs at its competitors, namely OpenAI. AI-generated ads could make an appearance, too. Super Bowl LX is set to kick off at 6:30PM ET/3:30PM PT on Sunday, February 8th at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Super Bowl AI War Set as OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and Amazon Alexa+ Face Off

In the Super Bowl ad for Amazon's Alexa+ AI assistant, Chris Hemsworth fears that the AI is trying to kill him. Perhaps it will trigger a rogue garage door, or close the pool cover while he is out for a swim. Ultimately, of course, he learns that the AI just wants him to be happy, offering a massage to relieve his tension. Watch: As it happens, AI anxiety seems to be running high, and the Super Bowl is poised to become the center of that conversation. Even as AI threatens every part of the entertainment business, live sports is still the king of advertising, and even the biggest of the tech giants are gladly ponying up the $8-$10 million fees (and millions more in production costs) to secure an ad slot. Sure, AI might steal all our time (and maybe our jobs, or our lives?), but for now, these companies are paying handsomely just to get a tiny slice of human attention. Google Gemini, for example, is taking an earnest approach in its ad, showing how it hopes users can take advantage of it's tech. For some background: OpenAI announced plans to bring advertising to its ChatGPT product, as it seeks to drive revenue to help cover the enormous expenses of building out an AI company. Anthropic, which has both professional AI tools and the Claude AI assistant, is using its Super Bowl ad to take a not-so-veiled shot at OpenAI. Watch: "All the time, we see proof that advertising works brilliantly in the right context. We're using advertising's biggest stage to ask a simple question: does it belong everywhere? So we made funny ads about how unfunny it would be," says Felix Richter, CCO at Mother, the agency that produced the ad. "People asking AI about their health, their relationships, their business. Then a sponsored answer. We don't need to explain why that's wrong. We just need to show it." But the Claude ad clearly struck a nerve: Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, responded in a post on X: "I guess it's on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren't real, but a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it," he wrote, adding that he thought they were funny, although his response doesn't sound like he was laughing. "Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can't pay for subscriptions." So OpenAI will use the Super Bowl to make its own case. "As for our Super Bowl ad: it's about builders, and how anyone can now build anything," Altman said. But in a Super Bowl filled with AI ads, both for AI chatbots and using AI tech, will it resonate with the human watching? Or will it become a relic destined for a deep corner of an LLM?