Since the 1970s, Super Bowl commercials have been a long-awaited aspect of the American tradition. However, this year, the beloved commercials we all look forward to had an unsavory AI-flavored twist. During Super Bowl LX, viewers noticed that most commercials were lower-quality and saturated with the same industries.
In Super Bowl LX, a 30-second commercial can cost $8 million, before the cost of celebrity spokespeople and crafting an entertaining ad. AI dominated the advertisements this year, both advertising their services and as the force responsible for the creation of some of this year’s ads.
Svedka Vodka is facing backlash after airing an entirely AI-generated commercial of dancing robots. This ad is being lauded as the first ever fully AI-generated ad, but that’s nothing to be proud of. Most viewers described the ad as “odd” or “disturbing”, which are hardly sales-boosting endorsements.
A report by CBS News on this year’s commercials said, “nearly a quarter of the game’s pre-released ads dealing with artificial intelligence in some way,” a staggering statistic in a field that is usually lauded for human creativity and innovation.
The prominence of advertising from these industries projects American interests as somewhat lazy and irresponsible, which does not bode well. It reflects our collective priorities and values as a nation in a concerning way.
With an early estimate of the Super Bowl audience around 130 million, this much AI exposure is frustrating and concerning. Turning to AI for inherently human tasks, namely creative projects, is unethical and unfair.
There are a host of reports explaining the negative correlation between AI usage and mental health, in addition to the well-known and detrimental environmental impacts of generative AI platforms. Pushing commercials of such problematic products and companies is irresponsible and unwise.
Of course, this is not to reduce the merit of the few standout commercials this year, like Levi’s commercial with Doechii and Michelob Ultra’s ski-themed commercial. But Super Bowl commercials were previously guaranteed to be a showcase of human creativity. The imposition of AI into this creative field is an overstep of what we should be allowing technology to do.
As college students, there is looming anxiety about finding a job post-graduation. Because of the advent of AI, this anxiety is growing larger for students graduating with majors in the arts or more generally in humanities fields.
“I’m a bit worried for my future job … It’s scary that we’re using AI for such big projects that typically would have large teams working on them,” communications and media studies major Aiana Bulan said to the FSView. “What would that mean for projects that require smaller teams? If your best content is AI, that’s embarrassing.”
What does it say about our values and priorities as a nation that we are allowing AI to take the place of trained artists and copywriters? Generative AI was marketed as a product to do the inconsequential tasks for us, and allow people to spend more time on the things they love. Instead, AI is taking the place of artisans who have worked their whole careers for this type of opportunity.
Unfortunately, as these commercials showed, generative AI isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We should all be more infuriated with companies using AI to create their branding, and concerned with how much of our culture is being infused with AI.
Ava Werner is an English major at Florida State University and a Staff Writer for the Views section of the FSView & Florida Flambeau, the student-run, independent online news service for the FSU community. Email our staff at contact@fsview.com.
This article originally appeared on FSU News: Super Bowl LX’s AI Problem
Reporting by Ava Werner, Staff Writer, FSView / FSU News
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