Perhaps the most anticipated part of the Super Bowl is not the game, but the ads. Every year, companies spend millions of dollars to secure coveted ad placement spots in between gameplay. A well placed ad can bring in new customers, portray the advertiser in a desirable manner, and potentially bring back more in profits than was spent on creating and airing the ad. After all, advertising is a clever game of psychological engineering meant to subconsciously sway the mind of the viewer in a way that makes them more likely to perform actions favorable to the advertiser.
With the much debated rise of artificial intelligence tools invading every corner of our lives, it seems that AI corporations have felt the need to sway public opinion to be more favorable towards them. Some of the prominent leaders in AI: OpenAI, Meta, and Google, all aired ads portraying their services in a positive manner during the Super Bowl. In addition to ads by the leaders in the race for artificial intelligence, Coca-Cola and GoDaddy also aired ads with references to AI.
The desire for artificial intelligence to masquerade as a friend to humanity does not seem shocking, taking into consideration the recent debacle faced by American AI companies due to Chinese competitor DeepSeek. Despite being a relatively new model on the scene, DeepSeek has surpassed OpenAI and Meta in terms of speed and reliability, in addition to having lower operational costs. Furthermore, new research has shown that those who are less literate about the great wizard behind the proverbial emerald city of artificially generated text and images are more enamored by the tricks that AI can conjure. While AI is, in essence, machine learning, advancements in transformer architecture and GPUs have made it possible for rapid advances in machine learning to occur, leading to seemingly mystical artificially generated creations.
In their minute long ad spot, OpenAI positions ChatGPT as a part of the “Intelligence Age,” as they call it. Set to upbeat, adventurous music, the ad presents a montage of humanities’ greatest achievements through the ages, ending in a multitude of voices asking ChatGPT questions ranging from requests to summarize passages to coming up with entire business plans. Kate Rouch, CMO at OpenAI, is quoted telling the Verge that references to OpenAI’s plans for AGI and superintelligence were not mentioned in the ad in favor of presenting a more relevant message to an audience not familiar with AI. Similarly, Google’s advertisement for Gemini, their competitor to ChatGPT, is a heart tugging vignette of a young woman’s life through the perspective of her father applying for a job. In this ad, Gemini is portrayed as a helpful, perhaps wiser friend, helping the father realize the valuable skills learned from being a parent.
The insistence of artificial intelligence corporations to be seen as friendly is frankly disturbing. For those familiar with AI, the advertisements come off as blatant propaganda that paints what is quite literally a word guessing machine as intelligent. Perhaps the attitude that these corporations want us to have towards their product is best demonstrated by the Coca-Cola commercial; one of complacency to the very real threat presented by AI. Portraying AI as a helpful tool is dangerous and irresponsible, considering how susceptible large learning models are to making up false information that sounds authoritative. Equating a machine that operates on pattern matching and lacks the human quality of reasoning ability to intelligence is misleading to an audience who is unfamiliar with these concepts. Using catchy visuals and heartwarming stories to sway a less-informed audience is propagandist and a potentially insidious action by AI corporations. While AI has been considered doomed to fail by naysayers, this push towards mainstream AI acceptance could be the sign of new developments to come, and the Super Bowl advertisements may just be the red sunrise of artificial intelligence.
