Super Bowl commercials can spark as much conversation as the halftime show or the game itself — and this year, what people are talking about is the substantial number of ads there were trying to sell America on AI.
One in particular that got people talking was for Ring, a doorbell video camera and smart home-security device. It begins with a little girl getting kisses from her new puppy, a yellow Lab named Milo. Then, we see the same little girl looking forlorn as her dad staples a “lost dog” poster up in her neighborhood. Luckily, the Ring camera’s “Search Party” tool comes in to save the day, activating all of the neighborhood’s Ring video cameras to use AI and search for the dog. Milo is found!
Almost immediately, people took to social media to critique the commercial. “‘Surveillance state,’ but make it adorable,” tweeted one X user, adding, “Ring is owned by Amazon, and Amazon is a technology partner of ICE.” (Ring recently partnered with Flock Safety, a network of AI cameras that can be accessed by law enforcement. Ring did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but previously told NJ.com that “Search Party” only works for dogs, not humans.) “I had no opinion on Ring doorbells, but now I will actively avoid purchasing one as long as I live,” tweeted another.
Ring was far from the only ad propping up AI as helpful or positive. A commercial for Google’s Gemini showed a mom and her young son using generative AI to plan out what their new home would look like. GenSpark’s commercial featured Matthew Broderick encouraging people to take a day off and let their AI assistant work for them. Ramp showcased The Office character Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner) cloning himself to get all of his paperwork done. Meta promoted their Oakley AI sunglasses by showing athletes skydiving, running, biking, and playing golf while asking things like “Is it OK to eat mud?” and “When does the storm hit?”
Though the ads were trying to sell AI as a helpful, trustworthy tech we can all safely integrate into our lives, that’s not necessarily how the general public took it. Rumman Chowdhury, CEO of the public-benefit nonprofit Humane Intelligence and former U.S. science envoy for AI, tells Rolling Stone that she thinks this year’s AI commercials were incongruous with a society that has been coming to grips with its overreliance on technology.
“The AI ‘optimism at all cost’ ads were really out of touch with public sentiment on AI and technology broadly,” says Chowdhury, noting that 2026 has been called the “year of friction,” with people trying to scale back their use of technology. “People don’t want to buy expensive sunglasses to tell them what the weather is when you can’t even afford pizza because it’s like $60, and nobody’s making money, and the tariffs are kicking everyone’s ass.”
To Chowdhury, the ads felt like they were from “another era, where people still believed the shtick that these guys were going to usher in immense social and technological and economic change.” Instead, she says, people are starting to be critical of tech billionaires who are “trying to consolidate wealth and power.”
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As far as Ring using lost puppies to hype up their video technology, Chowdhury says she’s not surprised people criticized the commercial. “Replace lost dog with a Black kid wandering around in the neighborhood and that’s where all of our minds go,” she says. “Not because we’re paranoid, because that’s literally how it’s being used. You think we’re stupid?” (Ring recently told Wirecutter that they will only share footage with local law enforcement, and only with the permission of device owners, unless they’re compelled by law to do so.)
Another ad that stuck was Amazon’s spot, in which Chris Hemsworth busts into his house, (for some reason holding a venomous snake) and tells his wife, Elsa Pataky, he’s concerned the AI assistant Alexa+ is going to kill him. He goes through all of the ways it could happen — closing the garage door on his neck, ordering a man-eating bear to his door — but when Alexa offers to book him a cinnamon scrub, he relents and accepts the device into his home. Chowdhury was put off by how it mocked people who are skeptical about AI. “It’s very condescending,” she says.
Suresh Venkatasubramanian, director of the Center for Tech Responsibility at Brown University, says he’s seen a shift over the past six months with how people view AI.
“Ever since the summer and the horrific teen suicides, poll after poll is saying that people are generally more cautious and concerned about the rapid flood of AI tools everywhere,” says Venkatasubramanian. He believes the backlash to the commercials is a reflection of how people are starting to think about the concerns regarding AI.
“Tech has always been about, ‘Here is a future we can imagine for you. We’re not there yet, but we might get there,’” says Venkatasubramanian. “It’s always about selling the future with gauzy imagery and visuals and trying to make it seem like this is exactly what’s going to happen. And saying ‘Don’t worry about all these other boring issues the naysayers will talk about.’
Companies using the glamour and spotlight of the Super Bowl to sell their products is nothing new, and certainly not exclusive to tech companies. And there are certain elements that companies use to market their products. Rama Yelkur, the executive dean of the business school at Texas Women’s University, has run a Super Bowl research panel for 25 years. She says that although the product has changed, this year’s commercials used many of the same tropes that are known to work on consumers.
“Humor, animals, children, celebrities, music — these are the winning ingredients,” says Yelkur. She says from a storytelling standpoint, the Ring ad captured a lot of these ingredients by having a cute puppy and children, which tug at people’s hearts. Similarly, she liked the Chris Hemsworth Alexa+ commercial.
“They used humor, celebrities, [and] animals very cleverly,” she says. “There’s a snake in the beginning, a bear at the end, it’s poking fun at people who can’t use AI.”
Yelkur ranked Google’s Gemini commercial about imagining a new home as one of the most emotionally appealing, likeable ads that tugged at the heartstrings. Elon Musk’s AI.com ad however, which featured nothing but product information as the letters scrolled, was ranked one of her worst or least likeable.
She likens the wave of AI commercials to the 2000 Super Bowl, which happened at the height of the dot-com bubble. Eleven dot-com companies bought ads. “Before the end of the year,” Yelkur says, “Nine out of the 11 companies went out of business.”
Chowdhury also remembers the dot-com commercials. “We had Pets.com and it was like, ‘Here’s a new service you can use!’ it was grounded in a very real problem they were solving,” says Chowdhury. “Now I’m nostalgic for those days. Like, ‘Remember when they gave a shit about the thing we actually wanted and tried to sell it to us?’ Now it’s like, ‘Go sign up for your ai.com account. Why? Nobody knows, but go, sheep. Sign up for it.’”
From Rolling Stone US
