Super Bowl Ads Went All-In on AI, Then Got Mocked

Super Bowl Sunday didn’t just feature a couple of AI commercials, it came in waves. One count put it at about 15 of 66 spots, roughly 23 percent, either using AI in the build or selling AI outright. People picked up on it fast, and the reaction online shifted from curiosity to eye-rolls as the breaks kept circling back to the same idea. 

The pushback wasn’t really about whether AI “belongs” in advertising. It was about repetition and fuzziness. A lot of the messaging sat in the same safe lane, helpful, friendly, inevitable, and after a while it all started to blend. When every brand promises smarter tools and a smoother life, the audience ends up asking the one thing these ads rarely answered, what’s the actual payoff for me, right now. 

Pepsi’s polar bear ad leaned into classic CG and felt like a quiet dunk on Coca-Cola’s hated AI holiday spot. 

There’s also the “AI look” problem. Several AI-forward spots got criticized for feeling cheap or incoherent, and even some traditional commercials got dragged into the AI debate because their visuals looked a little off. Once viewers suspect something is generated, they stop watching like it’s a story and start watching like it’s a flaw hunt, and that kills the exact emotional rhythm Super Bowl ads usually depend on.

One small moment captured the new reality in a more practical way. A minimalist URL spot for AI.com drove so much curiosity traffic that the site reportedly crashed, and the internet turned the crash into a joke within minutes. That’s the night in one picture, attention arrives instantly, judgment arrives faster, and any AI pitch has to survive real-time scrutiny, not just look good on a storyboard.

By the end of the night, the takeaway wasn’t that AI “won” the Super Bowl. It was that AI advertising is hitting a taste and clarity wall, while viewers still reward the same things they always have, clean storytelling, real emotion, and jokes that land. The brands that break through next won’t be the ones that shout “AI” louder, they’ll be the ones that say something specific and make it feel human.