Super Bowl commercials are just as anticipated as the game itself. In some years, a common theme emerges in the ads, particularly in tech. This year, AI made its existence known with a commercial from the biggest name in the AI game.
OpenAI's ChatGPT received its first Super Bowl commercial on Sunday. Called "The Intelligence Age," the minute-long ad went through some of the most significant tech advances in the history of humanity including the wheel, the light bulb, and the internet. The commercial ends with the line, "All progress has a starting point."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X after the commercial aired saying, "An ode to the history of technology, and human potential."
an ode to the history of technology, and human potential: https://t.co/VMXSqKVyv8February 10, 2025
The ChatGPT Super Bowl commercial cost OpenAI $17 million, according to The Verge. OpenAI's CMO Kate Rouch says the ad was intended to introduce ChatGPT to the millions watching who weren't familiar with the technology.
"We want the message to feel relevant to the audience that is watching the Super Bowl, which includes tens of millions of people who have no familiarity with AI,” Rouch told The Verge. “This is a celebration of human creativity and an extension of human creativity.”
Rouch also confirmed that no AI-generated content was used in the final production of the commercial. OpenAI's text-to-video model, Sora, was used to develop the concept for the ad.
One of OpenAI's competitors, Google, had a couple of its own commercials during the Big Game. The ads promoted the company's Gemini AI, and one commercial shows a father practicing a job interview with the AI, which is available on the Google Pixel 9.
Google also announced it would air 50 different local commercials during the Super Bowl, one for each state, promoting how its AI helps local businesses. One ad, however, appeared to have an issue, which some say could be the AI hallucinating.
In the ad for Wisconsin, a Gemini result asking for "a description of Smoked Gouda that would appeal to cheese lovers" came back with a result saying the cheese accounts for "50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption." One user on X said this stat can't be possibly true and that Gemini provided no source.
In Google's Wisconsin local Super Bowl ad, an AI hallucination is shown on screen: It says *Gouda* accounts for "50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption." Gemini provides no source, but that is just unequivocally false Cheddar & mozzarella would like a word… pic.twitter.com/UwIBHAO4x6January 31, 2025
Jerry Dischler, President of Cloud Applications at Google, replied to the post saying it wasn't a hallucination.
"Hey Nate - not a hallucination, Gemini is grounded in the Web - and users can always check the results and references, Dischler said. "In this case, multiple sites across the web include the 50-60% stat."
It appears the final commercial was changed. Now, the response from Gemini leaves out the "50 to 60 percent" stat from the answer.
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