If you're looking for a Super Bowl LIX game recap, you've tapped the wrong link. I want to talk about this year's Super Bowl ads, or more specifically a pair of tech-related ads, especially the one that had me reaching for the Kleenex and put the ongoing AI wars into a fresh perspective.
I'm old enough to remember a time when the Super Bowl ads were just about Pepsi, McDonald's, Wendy's, Doritos, beer, and the newest cars. Super Bowl LIX was another reminder that these days nothing drives ad dollars and, perhaps, consumer interest like technology.
Woven in between oddball AI slots like recreating football icon Jimmy Johnson for a simultaneously warm and creepy tribute were a whole lot of tech ads. T-Mobile ran an ad introducing its new Satellite cell service, and Square Space confusingly employed indie actor Barry Keoghan to pitch personal website building.
For me, though, nothing generated as much interest, engagement and emotion, along with some head-scratching, as a pair of AI-focused commercials, one from Google for the Pixel 9 phone running Gemini Live and the other from OpenAI, plugging ChatGPT.
Black and white
OpenAI's minute-long ChatGPT spot, which TechRadar's John-Anthony Disotto has also written about. provoked the head-scratching. The lack of a voice-over, or color (beyond black and white), and use of pointillism-style dots to create imagery, made it almost impossible at first to divine whose commercial I was watching.
Granted, the music is sort of catchy and the imagery of things like flames, horses racing, corn blooming, ships sailing the high seas, trains racing toward you, and light bulbs is sort of compelling in a, "What the hell am I watching?" sort of way. But the key to a good Super Bowl ad is to grab people within the first 10 seconds, and OpenAI failed in that regard. I appreciated that the imagery was growing more refined and clearer – the dots kept getting smaller to represent ever-more complex imagery – but I still didn't get it.
More than halfway through, there was some historical audio from a newscast, the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, and even the iconic modem handshake sound (ask your parents). Finally, with just 20 seconds left, we hear someone ask an AI chatbot to summarize... er... something. The request audio started overlapping so I couldn't tell who was asking what.
One has to wonder if anyone at OpenAI even understands people.
The on-screen text says, 'All progress has a starting point.' Okay, sure. Whatever that means. Then you hear the more recognizable ChatGPT voice, and we see the first color of the entire ad, ChatGPT's blue voice chatbot icon, and we hear 'What do you want to create next?'
The spot ends with 'ChatGPT' in a large font, and then the OpenAI interwoven icon.
This is a commercial created by someone who thinks, "If they're smart enough, they'll get it. We're creating something new here. Let's be mysterious, charismatic, obtuse even. Everyone will love it and remember it."
I wonder if the only 'person' they showed this ad to was a version of ChatGPT, one of the models that can tell you about any photo or video you show it. Perhaps ChatGPT watched it and said "I see a series of dots and many moving images. This all represents ChatGPT (me)." Whoever created the ad likely fixated on the words "moving images" and assumed they'd struck a chord. And they did – one of confusion.
One has to wonder if anyone at OpenAI even understands people. Have they spent so much time in the bowels of ChatGPT's various powerful models that they've forgotten what it's like to be human, or even to talk to a human?
Moving images
The best Super Bowl LIX ads told a story: a horse rescuing a beer keg (trust me, it's better than it sounds); David Beckham discovering he has a secret twin (clever, funny) Matthew McConaughey showing how football might have been created just so we could eat more food. I'd argue that story-telling is a good rule of thumb for almost any TV commercial.
Google's Pixel ad, entitled 'Dream Job', was sneaky. It grabbed my attention from the start with a refrigerator featuring family shots and a guy clearly trying to find a job.
Google didn't try to hide the product or its intentions; the middle-aged guy is clearly holding a Pixel 9 phone and he's workshopping an interview pitch. From this point forward, though, Google cleverly blends product utility and emotion.
Google cleverly blends product utility and emotion.
The guy's pitch is dry and unemotional, but Google Gemini Live asks him a key question: "Tell me about the job that taught you the most." What follows is a walk back through the man's life as a stay-at-home dad, raising a little girl into a young woman. Each job experience he relates is actually about raising his daughter. When for example, we see an old video of him spoon-feeding his unhappy toddler daughter, he tells Gemini, "It was a role where I learned to take a lot of constructive criticism."
The whole two-minute spot is heartwarming.
Gemini eventually asks, "When it comes to work, what motivated you?" as the images flash back through his child's life right up to her high school graduation and his dropping her off for college. He answers, "I guess, knowing that people can depend on me."
Oh, but Google and Gemini are not done. Naturally, the daughter turns back and runs to the car to give her dad one more hug.
This is a commercial about AI, right? So why am I crying?! Through my tears, I see that the ad has circled back to showing Gemini complimenting the dad on his answer and telling him he's ready.
The ad ends with the words 'Google Pixel 9 with Gemini Live' and the dad beginning the real job interview.
Does Google get us?
Google managed to pull us along through a whole emotional journey while showing exactly how you might use its powerful AI chatbot. By focusing on our shared humanity, the ad made Gemini Live feel like something a human would use.
If you're a parent, the ad's theme probably hits you like a gut punch. Even if you're not, you'd be made of stone if it didn't move you
OpenAI had a big opportunity with its Super Bowl LIX commercial: it would reach at least 100 million people, and the ad's message would probably define how consumers thought about ChatGPT for at least the next few months, if not longer. The problem is, the ad OpenAI delivered gave us nothing to think about it. It was about as inhuman and dispassionate as HAL 9000.
Google, on the other hand, has been playing this game for longer (it ran its first Super Bowl ad 15 years ago) and understood the task at hand: connect with real people about something that is intrinsically artificial. Make them want to try it. Make them remember by imprinting an emotional note they won't soon forget.
Based on these ads, Google gets us, OpenAI does not. And that's why Google Gemini may ultimately win this AI race.
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