People hate AI, but they love using it . Here's to Super Bowl ads
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People hate AI
I would argue, that Artificial Intelligence has a very weird vibe to it, and you get to feel that when talking to people with different backgrounds. My general consensus is, people don’t like the concept of Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is, well, artificial. It tries to take away skills and knowledge that we as humans have developed throughout our existence. There are machines now that can think, which used to be exclusive to us, humans. Artificial Intelligence spreads fear about the unknown, the future, and produces worries about jobs.
People love using AI though. What people do like is what AI does, how it helps them. They love the idea that all of a sudden they can work 5 times as fast, cut out the boring work, get an answer to anything, have AI do the thinking. They love experiencing the magic of generating an image. They love how they created a website without knowing what that even means. They love interacting with Artificial Intelligence, using ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, but they hate that it exists.
And ads for AI companies should reflect exactly that. They need to show how people can do more, learn faster, build higher, discover more, and push the world forwards by using such tools. Here’s to Super Bowl ads.
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The Keep thinking campaign by Anthropic is really great. It reflects exactly that sentiment that I described above, how people are scared about some other entity other than humans can think. So Anthropic called it out – keep thinking.
On the other hand, the ChatGPT Super Bowl ad of 2025 is the exact contrary. It’s cold, mechanical and sets discovering fire equal with Artificial Intelligence? It shows an insecure future as no one knows what the ad is trying to portray. It’s not a single human here, it’s dots that fly around. This is what scares people, the loss of human interaction. Go watch it yourself.
And OpenAI noticed. Their next ad series was brilliant. They went back to the human side of AI. It shows how people use ChatGPT in different situations, how it helps them. It’s personal connection and a real story. Here’s an example.
You might have heard about advertisements in ChatGPT and maybe even about the Claude Super Bowl ads. I have mixed feelings this campaign against (OpenAI) Ads in Chatbots. They are humorous and people can relate to the way AI talks to them. And yes, all of a sudden Mom and Dad knew about Claude, we talked about the company, just because of this ad series. In that sense, mission accomplished.
But again, this is Super Bowl. The average Super Bowl viewer doesn’t know that Ads are coming to ChatGPT (we are a few months early, nobody has seem ads in ChatGPT yet), so all they remember is weirdly talking human (robots) with ads in them, and the Claude logo at the end. This is not a connection that you want to have with your brand. The ads work for the tech bubble, but not for the general public. It’s a missed opportunity to tell an inspiring story.
There is that perspective. Nobody will install Claude because of that ad, nobody will feel inspired. People get a weird feeling about the brand, and don’t understand a thing.
Either way, here you go:
While Anthropic’s ads never mention OpenAI, it’s clear who they mean. And Sam Altman answered directly to this, confronting Anthropic and saying, that ChatGPT ads don’t work the way they are portrayed in those ads (although they do).
I’m not reading all this. If you need a giant wordsalad after your competition hits you with a humorous ad, they outmaneuvered you. Benjamin De Kraker, @BenjaminDEKR
Touching stories are what connects people with technology. And there is not better technology to tell a touching story about than Large Language Models.
Update
Now, a few days later, OpenAI has launched their campaign, called “with ChatGPT”. These are beautiful, and exactly what I meant with telling a touching story. They show how different people use AI. They give a person who’s watching and hasn’t used ChatGPT inspiration and ideas what to use it for. Those ads are trying to drive new users who haven’t touched LLMs at all, instead of bringing people to another service. It’s positive, inspiring, targeting exactly the viewer himself (the three different spots were shown depending on the geographical location of the viewer). That’s how an AI spot should look like. Because it is about using AI, and not AI itself. Remember the beginning? People don’t like AI, but they love using it.
Update from after the Super Bowl
Let me cite adweek.com
Early audience response suggested the message [of the Claude campaign] struggled to land. According to an iSpot survey of 500 viewers, the ad’s likeability score placed it in the bottom 3% compared with Super Bowl ads over the past five years. Its top-two-box purchase intent scored 24% below Super Bowl norms and 19% below ads in its category that aired over the last 90 days. Viewers most commonly described their reaction as “WTF,” signaling confusion around both the message and the execution.
“Claude’s ad has done a good job of stoking conversations and controversy online, but the ad does not test well among general population audiences with confusion around the message and execution,” said Sammi Scharninghausen, brand analyst at iSpot. “WTF is a common emotional signal for the AI category in general, so these companies need to work hard at delivering a clear message and strong storytelling that ties to the brand in order to connect with broad audiences”.
But, as I said, Anthropic has accomplished their mission in the sense that Mom and Dad now know Claude exists. Thousands of influencers on the web started talking about Claude, including people like Scott Galloway. But again, no normalo saw the ad at Super Bowl and installed Claude. No one. Maybe that was never the point.