Super Bowl LX was widely described as the "AI Bowl." According to iSpot, 15 out of 66 commercials (23%) featured AI in some capacity, whether using it in production, advertising AI products directly, or both.
Svedka aired what's being called the first primarily AI-generated Super Bowl ad. The 30-second spot, "Shake Your Bots Off," brought back the brand's retired Fembot mascot alongside a new BroBot character, both dancing at a human party. Produced by Silverside AI (the studio behind the controversial AI Coca-Cola holiday ads), the ad cost roughly $8 million for the slot, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Sazerac's CMO Sara Saunders said the creative concept was developed by humans, while AI handled animation, facial expressions, and body movements trained on choreography submitted by 23-year-old dancer Jessica Rizzardi, who won $10,000 for her winning routine.
AI companies bought their own high-profile slots. Anthropic ran spots satirizing what happens when AI chatbots serve ads mid-conversation. OpenAI promoted Codex with a 60-second spot about building things. Google showcased Gemini helping a mother and son visualize their new home. Meta featured Spike Lee directing an Oakley AI glasses campaign. Amazon promoted Alexa+.
xAI ran a $1.75 million Grok Imagine 1.0 contest during Super Bowl weekend. The @XCreators account offered $1M for first place, $500K for second, and $250K for third for the best 30-second ad created with Grok's new video generator. The 48-hour turnaround and judging based on X timeline impressions drew criticism for favoring accounts with large existing followings. The second-place winner @Diesol took home $500,000 for an ad following a boy's dream of reaching space with Grok as a companion.
What matters: the Super Bowl marked a shift from AI as a novelty topic in advertising to AI serving as both the creation tool and the product being sold, with nearly a quarter of all spots touching it in some way.
