John Tones
WriterI've been writing about culture for twenty-something years and, at Xataka, I cover everything related to movies, video games, TV shows, comics, and pop culture.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has produced its first TV commercial. For the debut, it chose the most high-profile stage possible: A $14 million slot during the Super Bowl halftime show, where trailers for next year’s biggest movies air and celebrities endorse the world’s top brands.
Standing out from the crowd. As tech giants such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Anthropic (backed by Amazon), and xAI (founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk) compete in the AI landscape—and as China enters the race with developments like DeepSeek—OpenAI is taking a step to stand out. With 300 million weekly users, the company is looking beyond the tech industry, and the Super Bowl provides the ideal platform to expand its reach.
The investment war. According to The Wall Street Journal, AI companies spent $332 million on advertising in 2024, more than double the total in 2023. As AI systems move beyond a niche industry, marketing budgets are rising to match their ambitions, leading to high-profile (and expensive) campaigns like OpenAI’s.
Some Super Bowl precedents. Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft used last year’s Super Bowl to highlight AI advancements, though always in the context of other products. Google, for example, introduced Guided Frame, an AI-powered tool that helps Pixel users with vision impairments take photos. Microsoft promoted Copilot, while Anthropic took a minimalist approach, airing a five-second message: “Claude is a next-generation AI assistant.”
What’s the ad about? The minute-long spot, created with agencies Accenture Song and Droga5, ambitiously condenses the history of information and its connection to humanity. Titled The Intelligence Age, the ad features a distinctive visual style: from two dots connecting to animations that use dozens of dots to form complex images. The evolution culminates with voices in multiple languages interacting with ChatGPT. The full announcement is available on Adweek.
A name behind it all. Kate Rouch, OpenAI’s chief marketing officer, spearheaded the campaign. Previously, she led aggressive sales strategies at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global, including a Super Bowl ad that gained attention for its on-screen QR code. In an interview with The Verge, Rouch described OpenAI’s new ad as “a celebration of human creativity and an extension of human creativity.” Notably, the ad was created without any AI system, except in the earliest production stages.
Image | OpenAI
Related | We Made a Complete List of All OpenAI’s Models to Try to Understand Their Names. It’s Hopeless
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