In the age of AI content, The Super Bowl felt old-fashioned

AI is turning culture into a production shortcut — faster, cheaper and, at times, familiar. But the Super Bowl is one of the last places where brands are reminded that cultural likeness is easy but shared experience is earned.

This year’s game made that distinction clearer than ever. The ads that generated real reaction were not the ones leaning into AI aesthetics or winking at the tech itself. They were the ones that did something more old-fashioned: make people laugh, play up sentiment or reach a collective of America that feels increasingly rare in today’s climate. AI, meanwhile, hovered less as a source of shared delight and more as a point of suspicion — a backdrop to the conversation rather than the moment itself. 

The tech was everywhere in the surrounding discourse, just not in the emotional sense of the work. In fact, the term “AI” was mentioned 6,939 times in conversations tied to Super Bowl ads, according to social analytics firm Sprout Social data between Jan. 27 and Feb. 9, with viewers openly debating which spots felt machine-made and what that meant for creativity.

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