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Artificial intelligence companies are playing their biggest role yet at the Super Bowl, with all major AI companies buying advertising to showcase their tools to an expected audience of 130 million viewers, both consumer and enterprise.
This year’s Super Bowl ads cost a record $8 million on average for a 30-second spot, with some reaching $10 million and even more to produce. Well-funded tech giants and startups alike are seizing the opportunity to join the national conversation.
The battle began the week before the big game, when Anthropic’s Claude debuted an ad that undermined OpenAI’s decision to include ads in ChatGPT. The ad sparked a response from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, which brought more attention to the campaign. OpenAI will return to Super Bowl advertising this year following its debut campaign (a 60-second spot) last year.
But Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Altman aren’t the only ones facing off. All major AI players are getting time in important matches. The campaign is being run on behalf of some large advertiser categories, including automakers that are exiting the market.
google is advertising Gemini AI for the past two years, after touting the Pixel’s AI-powered features “Guided Frame” and “Magic Eraser.”
Amazon leans into concerns about AI in the home with an Alexa+ appearance in which actor Chris Hemsworth expresses his concerns about the risks of AI in a comedic way. and Metais back with a spot of Oakley Meta AI glasses that give you access to AI tools rather than promoting chatbots like other tech companies.
Many smaller AI companies are also buying Super Bowl spots to showcase their products to a broader audience.
Startup Genspark is marketing its AI productivity platform with an ad featuring Matthew Broderick. Base44 is introducing an AI-powered app development tool and says anyone can use its products to create custom apps. And Wix, known for its website creation tools, is introducing its new Harmony platform, which uses AI to enable web design.
Another such small AI company, Artlist.io, puts its technology at the center of a 30-second spot introducing its AI tools to consumers. Completely AI-generated, this ad was purchased a week ago and boasts of being created in just 5 days and for just a few thousand dollars.
The company is one of a number of companies, including some unrelated to technology, to use AI to create ads this year.
Svedka vodka advertised this year for the first time in decades after the ban on alcoholic beverages. (Absolut also runs extensive gaming ads.) Svedka is bringing back the fembot character that appeared in ads in the early 2000s, this time with an AI trained on TikTok dances to help.
Other uses of AI are more subtle. Xfinity used AI to make the cast of 1993’s “Jurassic Park” look younger in a new commercial.
Since commercial production costs for Super Bowl ads typically start at $1 million and typically go much higher (celebrities can sometimes charge millions of dollars for cameos, for example), the reaction to this year’s Super Bowl ads could have a big impact on how these high-profile spots are produced.
