From Svedka to Anthropic, brands make bold plays with AI in Super Bowl ads

This year’s Super Bowl ads leaned heavily on artificial intelligence, with brands using AI both to create commercials and to promote new AI products. The technology shared the spotlight with movie trailers and snack brands, appearing in spots that ranged from dancing robots to smart glasses and even a public spat between tech founders.

Svedka ran what it calls the first "primarily" AI-generated national Super Bowl spot: a 30-second commercial titled "Shake Your Bots Off" that pairs the robot Fembot with a new companion, Brobot, at a human party. Sazerac said it took roughly four months to reconstruct Fembot and train AI to mimic facial expressions and body movements, though humans handled elements such as the storyline.

The vodka brand worked with AI firm Silverside, the team behind recent AI-generated Coca-Cola commercials, and the spot fueled debate about whether AI will replace creative jobs. Anthropic chose a different approach, using its ad to mock OpenAI’s plan to add ads to ChatGPT with the line "Ads are coming to AI.