The Super Bowl has long been a proving ground for new technologies seeking mass legitimacy. This year, generative AI took the field in force. But despite years of hype, ballooning valuations and rapidly growing usage, many of the ads leaned on familiar promises and vague positioning. Four years into the AI hypecycle and it’s never been more clear that AI is in a messaging crisis.
According to iSpot, 23% of Super Bowl commercials—15 out of the 66 ads—featured AI. This includes giants like OpenAI and Anthropic—selling AI directly to consumers—while consumer brands, including vodka maker Svedka, leaned on the technology to make its ad. Taken together, the ads reflected a broader AI arms race this football season, with brands across product categories framing the technology as inevitable, while promising smarter tools, more human interactions, and the seamless integration of AI into everyday life.
Yet much of these advertisements struggled to clearly articulate what sets one offering apart from another, even as AI becomes mainstream.
“The commercials are similar to how AI was portrayed last year–practical use cases for AI or humanizing AI in people’s daily lives,” said Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst, Sonata Insights.
In 2026, nearly 30% of internet users will use ChatGPT, according to an Emarketer survey, a figure expected to rise to 35% by 2029. That growth, while significant, also underscores the limits of how quickly AI platforms can expand their user base, even as investor expectations continue to climb. OpenAI, for instance, is reportedly eyeing a valuation north of $800 billion as it pursues another round of cash.
“AI players are trying to get better awareness for their offerings,” said Jeremy Goldman, senior director of content, Emarketer. According to Goldman, there’s a natural ceiling to how quickly this technology can actually advance, and companies are under pressure to accelerate it because they’ve promised investors returns that depend on exponential growth.
That pressure helps explain why AI companies are spending millions on Super Bowl airtime to establish themselves as foundational brands. “Their only chance is brand differentiation,” Goldman said.
Targeting each other’s market
That emphasis on brand over product also reflects a growing overlap in what leading AI companies are selling—and who they are selling it to.
Once positioned as distinct tools for different audiences, with ChatGPT marketed as a broad consumer platform and Claude framed primarily as a coder-focused tool, the companies are increasingly converging on similar promises around productivity and coding efficiency, blurring the lines between their offerings.
Anthropic’s Super Bowl debut, which drew close attention from rivals, illustrated the risks of that convergence. By centering its message on promising not to include ads on Claude, which OpenAI announced it would begin testing earlier this year. The company made a bet that its ad free principles would resonate with audiences more than product familiarity.
That wager came amid a significant awareness gap. According to an S&P Global 2025 survey of 1,149 respondents, 73% reported using ChatGPT, followed by Google’s Gemini at 41%. Tools like Perplexity and Claude registered in the single digits, with only 7% of respondents saying they use Claude.
“The vast majority of consumers don’t know what Claude is. Many people aren’t going to really get the whole ‘Oh, we’re comparing ourselves to chatGPT,’” said Williamson.
Early audience response suggested the message struggled to land. According to an iSpot survey of 500 viewers, the ad’s likeability score placed it in the bottom 3% compared with Super Bowl ads over the past five years. Its top-two-box purchase intent scored 24% below Super Bowl norms and 19% below ads in its category that aired over the last 90 days. Viewers most commonly described their reaction as “WTF,” signaling confusion around both the message and the execution.
“Claude’s ad has done a good job of stoking conversations and controversy online, but the ad does not test well among general population audiences with confusion around the message and execution,” said Sammi Scharninghausen, brand analyst at iSpot. “WTF is a common emotional signal for the AI category in general, so these companies need to work hard at delivering a clear message and strong storytelling that ties to the brand in order to connect with broad audiences”.
Sameness in the spotlight
Despite rapid advances in generative AI since 2022, the Super Bowl 60 ads suggested that many brands are still hesitant to move beyond broad narratives of helpfulness and accessibility.
One of the clearest contrasts came from Meta’s collaboration with Oakley, which showcased AI-enabled smart glasses designed to enhance athletic performance.
“[It’s] a strong example of AI translated into tangible value,” said Ben Williams, global chief creative officer, DEPT. “Where it falls short is memorability. It plays the story straight. A sharper twist or unexpected moment could have elevated it from impressive to iconic.
If Meta represented a cautious success, Svedka served as a “cautionary tale,” Williams said. The vodka brand resurrected its fembot from 2005 in an ad made with AI.
According to iSpot, viewers quickly noticed the AI-generated robots, responding with words like “weird,” “surreal,” and “WTF.” The ad generated little emotional connection to the brand, registering a brand match of just 7%—well below the alcoholic beverage industry norm of 63%.
Being the first vodka brand to advertise during Super Bow Svedkal “already has that category differentiation,” Goldman pointed out, adding that the brand missed the mark with its AI-themed ad, failing it to tie in with its brand ethos.
“Using AI to make the ad is not the idea. Here, AI as the tool to make the ad became the headline, resulting in a message that feels hollow rather than distinctive,” Williams said.
UPDATE 02/08/26: This article has been updated to include new data from iSpot on the number of advertisers that featured AI in their commercials.
