The AI Championship: Inside All the Super Bowl AI Ads
From Crashed Websites to Robot Twerking: The Hits, Misses, and Chaos of Super Bowl 2026 AI Advertising.
With AI dominating most of the technology headlines, it was easy to guess that most of the Super Bowl LX tech commercials would focus on AI. But these companies faced a unique challenge: how to explain their products. AI isn’t “one thing,” it is a label applied to a vast array of functions.
So, with the average price of a Super Bowl ad going for $8 million for 30 seconds, the ability to quickly unpack often vague, amorphous product value propositions presented a challenge. Let’s see which AI commercials achieved maximum storytelling power, and which just snagged bragging rights for being included in the Super Bowl.
AI.com
Kris Marszalek, the founder of Crypto.com, loves a good domain name, which is why he paid a whopping $70 million for the coveted AI.com domain name last year. Marszalek decided to launch the website during the biggest U.S. sporting event with a slick commercial inviting viewers to rush to the website and claim their AI.com/YourName handle. The problem is, as soon as the ad played, the website crashed. This is the ultimate fumble when playing the Super Bowl commercial game. Even if all you have is a logo on the site, the site needs to be operational.
Thankfully, for Marszalek, the site wasn’t down long, and viewers were able to access the site that promises to provide AI agent services. However, in order to prove that you’re human, you’re asked to provide a credit card that won’t be charged. This is fairly standard in techie circles, but I don’t know many mainstream consumers who will give their credit card information just to register a handle on a site they’re not even entirely sure what they can do with. Watch It Here
Anthropic
In a recent edition of Man And Robots, I featured Anthropic’s clever Claude ads that take shots at OpenAI and its decision to begin injecting advertisements into ChatGPT. The company created four ad spots, each showing a would-be ChatGPT user getting a useful answer (delivered by a human representing the chatbot), only to be surprised with an inappropriate advertisement in the middle of the chat session.
The ads are clever, well acted and shot, and apparently ticked off OpenAI CEO Sam Altman so much that he immediately wrote a long X.com post refuting the ad campaign’s characterization. Watch It Here
OpenAI
Since Altman had such a strong reaction to Anthropic’s ad, everyone was curious whether OpenAI would take a similarly stinging shot back at its rival. In fact, OpenAI did just the opposite. The company’s ad, “You Can Just Build Things,” doesn’t hit you over the head with “buy our AI tools.” Instead, it seems to take a page from Apple and uses non-techie imagery of people reading, studying, brainstorming, and living life. It tells a story of creative inspiration and how its tools can be used to execute on that inspiration. I really felt like I was watching an Apple commercial, which is a good thing.
I will admit I got a bit excited toward the end of the commercial when I saw what looked like an OpenAI laptop. Alas, upon further examination, it appears they just affixed an OpenAI logo to what looks like a Samsung Galaxy Book Ultra (a Windows laptop), running OpenAI software that seems to have the markings of the macOS operating system. Watch It Here
Ramp.com
I’m not very familiar with this company, although I’ve seen their marketing in the last year. In this Super Bowl spot, they wisely use someone nearly everyone in the U.S. white-collar world knows: Brian Baumgartner a.k.a. Kevin Malone from The Office.
The ad isn’t incredibly clear about what Ramp does, but a quick look at the company website reveals that it offers AI Agent-powered finance operations software. It may sound boring, but this is one of the biggest growth areas in the AI space, and will pack a meaningful punch in corporate America with each passing year. Watch It Here
Meta
Meta has its ups and downs, especially as it tries to pivot from being all about the Metaverse to being a leader in artificial intelligence. Two areas where these two worlds are sure to come together is in the company’s wearable devices, specifically its Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. In an ad called “Athletic Intelligence is Here,” Meta shows off how dynamic the AI assistant tethered to its smartglasses can be.
One major highlight of the ad is that it features YouTube megastar streamer iShowSpeed, who wears the smartglasses while doing one of the stunts he’s known for. The ad also stars Marshawn Lynch, Spike Lee, and Sunny Choi. Watch It Here
Svedka Vodka
This is another ad I previewed in Man And Robots from U.S.-based vodka brand Svedka. The company decided to employ an agency that specializes in AI video ads to deliver an entirely AI-generated commercial featuring two robots enjoying the vodka in a nightclub filled with humans. The ad spot is called “Shake Your Bots Off,” and its retro aesthetic somewhat blunts what might be a jarring, fully AI-generated commercial. As I mentioned before, the response to the ad on YouTube has been mixed, but the fact that this brand was bold enough to do this indicates that this is just the first of many as AI video commercials become normalized. Watch It Here
Genspark
You can often tell who the target is for a Super Bowl ad based on the celebrity the company uses. In this case, Genspark, an AI search engine that pivoted to focusing on AI agents that assist with productivity, employed the talents of Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Producers).
Film nerds will understand why Broderick is a particularly inspired spokesperson pick for an AI startup. Broderick was the star of WarGames (1983), one of the most iconic films about AI systems and what can happen when they are given too much control. Watch It Here
Google Gemini
Google didn’t stray from its usual playbook with this one. The company has become adept at marrying pragmatic “how can this help me” stories with the human condition. In this mini-story, a mother and her child are trying to imagine how their new house will be set up now that they’re moving.
The family is only represented by voice-overs, but they are very effective at tugging at your family-first heartstrings, as Google’s Gemini AI tool does its work onscreen. It’s an understated ad, but it effectively demonstrates what Gemini is best at—serving as a kind of AI alternative to Photoshop that is faster and requires no design skill. Watch It Here
Ring Camera
Amazon’s Ring Camera was stealthily one of the stars of Chris Pratt’s new Mercy AI-focused science fiction film. However, in this ad, the AI in question is real. This ad spot rolls out Ring’s new Camera Search Party for Dogs tool, an AI-powered feature that can use neighborhood Ring cameras to find lost dogs.
Needless to say, despite the cute story in the commercial, the first thing many will wonder about is how this will eventually be applied to humans. Sure, it would be nice to have this tool to possibly aid in the search for Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy Guthrie, and end their tragic search. But what happens when the AI-meets-camera tool is used to surveil or even stalk humans? These are questions we’ll all have to deal with at some point, but in the meantime, “Look at the cute doggo AI helped you find!” Watch It Here
Amazon Alexa
Marvel beefcake star Chris Hemsworth (Thor, The Avengers) stars with his real-life wife, Elsa Pataky, in this humorous take on AI fears when he’s presented with Alexa+ and its AI assistant skills in his own home. In short, Hemsworth voices his concerns about the AI assistant and all the potentially fatal things it might do to him if he allows it to integrate into his own home life. The scenarios are basically comedic takes on the most sinister AI-gone-rogue movies we’ve all seen. It’s a brilliant attempt to address some of the worries consumers have expressed about Alexa around privacy, now powered with AI. Watch It Here
HONORABLE MENTIONS 🏆
Dunkin’ Donuts 🍩
The rise of AI has apparently given some people amnesia, as many seem to have forgotten that Super Bowl commercials are where some of the most cutting-edge special effects are tested out. Therefore, when Ben Affleck (Gone Girl, Good Will Hunting) and a cohort of celebrities starred in a Dunkin’ Donuts younger version of themselves, many on social media tagged the video as an AI ad.
We get to see younger versions of Tom Brady, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Jason Alexander, Ted Danson, Alfonso Ribeiro, Jaleel White, and Jasmine Guy. It’s absolutely possible that AI tools were used to achieve these VFX results, but I haven’t seen any confirmation yet from the production company Artists Equity, which is owned by Affleck and his longtime business partner, actor Matt Damon (Bourne Identity, The Odyssey). Watch It Here
Pepsi 🥤
Pepsi hijacked Coca-Cola’s iconic polar bear, depicting it as taking a blind taste test, choosing Pepsi over its boss, Coke, and then spiraling into an existential crisis about it. What’s interesting here is that it’s fairly obvious that this ad wasn’t AI-generated, and commenters on the YouTube video seem to appreciate the lack of AI.
Alternatively, Coke has become known as one of the pioneering brands using AI for some of its commercials. So the familiar polar bear cheating on Coke to cozy up to Pepsi almost seems like a metaphor for old school VFX as favored by consumers over AI video…at least for the AI video nerds among us. Watch It Here
✨🤟STRANGE 👁️ HAPPENINGS🤟✨
OpenAI Mobile Device Leak?
Everyone loves a good leak, but only when they’re real. On Super Bowl Sunday, a supposedly leaked OpenAI Super Bowl ad appeared on Reddit that claimed to reveal the look of the AI startup’s upcoming device that is being designed by Apple’s Jony Ive. The fake ad, admired by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian himself, featured the image of actor Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, Succession) swooning over a chromed-out egg-shaped device that is paired with chrome earbuds. It’s all very sexy, but it was fake, as OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman quickly pointed out on social media.
Cardi B vs. Robots
I’ve saved the best for last. Rapper Cardi B was in San Francisco to support her New England Patriots boyfriend, Stefon Diggs. A couple of days before the big game, Cardi B walked outside of a hotel and encountered a humanoid robot, which she promptly began twerking on, as one is wont to do when meeting a robot for the first time. Unfortunately, when Cardi B swung around to dip her hips in front of the robot, her memory of her actual strip club days betrayed her. Unlike a human strip club patron, the diminutive robot couldn’t support her weight as she grabbed its shoulders, leading both human and automaton to tumble to the concrete in front of a throng of onlookers.
In the moment, she seemed to laugh it off, but almost no one expressed any sympathy for the poor MagicBot Z1 robot from the Chinese company MagicLab (it’s in our prayers for a speedy recovery). The entire incident was caught on video by a TMZ paparazzo and posted to the website. And that’s where the robo-fun stopped for Cardi B. Soon after TMZ posted the video, Cardi B took to X.com and told the news site, “Delete [the video] or I will sue …immediately.” That was on Saturday. As of this writing, the TMZ video of Cardi’s robot twerk fail is still up.