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Facing ‘AI slop’ and a trust problem, AI platforms invest in Super Bowl-level brand ads
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The era of AI slop is forcing some of tech’s biggest players to rethink their brand narratives. The problem isn’t consumer adoption. It’s trust. Seemingly, these platforms recognize the need to build a better relationship with consumers and they’re using the world’s biggest stages to do so.
Consumer sentiment around generative AI is waning. While 82% of advertising executives believe Gen Z and millennial consumers feel positively about AI-generated ads, only 45% of these consumers actually feel that way, according to recent research from the IAB and Sonata Insights, a custom research and advisory service.
Tech behemoths like OpenAI are taking notice, advertising aggressively in an attempt to alleviate public anxiety. OpenAI will reportedly return to the Super Bowl this year after its debut in 2025, according to The Wall Street Journal. (Read Digiday’s Super Bowl coverage here.) Meta, too, is returning to the Super Bowl in 2026, promoting its Oakley AI glasses instead of the Ray-Bans line it promoted last year.
Tech platforms become brand advertisers
AI platforms are waking up to the fact that they’re not just tech businesses, but part of brand-consumer relationships. Last year, platforms like Microsoft, Meta, Google and others shelled out more than $473 million to advertise their AI-powered offerings, according to MediaRadar. These tech behemoths are trying to upend the current distrust narrative, according to Morgan Seamark, managing partner at Triggers, a behavioral-science-based brand consultancy. Advertising seems to be the way to do that.
“There’s an innate distrust right now because it’s new,” Seamark said, adding “The only way you can avoid that being the narrative is to paint a new one and to overwhelm those negative associations with new positive ones.”
Advertising adds an air of legitimacy to a brand, said Spencer LaVallee, co-founder and creative director at Gus, a creative agency. This is especially true for the Super Bowl.
“[Part] of the magic of making a Big Game ad is that within 30 seconds, you can suddenly go from zero to 100 in terms of a feeling of legitimacy and mass awareness,” LaVallee said.
Besides everyday consumers, marketers need to be convinced too to spend on enterprise-level AI products. Thus far, clients have embraced back-end AI for things like editing and production. Still, there’s a hesitancy around fully-generated AI ads, according to Brian Yamada, chief innovation officer at VML.
“The key isn’t just you did it with AI, but what’s the story? What’s the narrative?” Yamada said.
Backlash and AI slop
AI platforms are facing an uphill battle, at least from the consumer standpoint, due to concerns that include job displacement, hallucinations and inaccurate information, deepfakes, data privacy and uncanny valley feeling content. Consumers have also expressed frustrations around AI data centers and their water usage. Not to mention, OpenAI has (finally) announced ads in ChatGPT. The move may cause a pile-on effect, in which consumers question the ethics of AI-tailored ads. OpenAI has tried to get ahead of said questions, announcing that ads would be “clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer.”
Backlash to AI slop has been strong and swift. Platforms like Pinterest and YouTube have started crackdowns on AI slop. Publishers like The New York Times, as well as Universal, Sony and Warner Music Groups, are mounting lawsuits against AI companies for copyright infringement. At the same time, some of these publishers have struck deals with AI companies for revenue share.
Watchdog groups and state legislators have also pushed for more transparency, sparking public conversations around AI platforms and ties to legal policy.
As trust in AI platforms remains challenged, the IAB says transparency is the answer. Earlier this month, the bureau released its AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework, calling for advertisers to disclose consumer-facing labels around AI in ads. That includes synthetic humans, digital twins, images, videos, audio and AI chatbots.
“People are becoming more opinionated. We’re also seeing that Gen Z and millennials are being exposed to more AI ads, and that’s probably driving a lot of that decision making on how they feel,” said Jack Koch, svp of research and insights at IAB.
The next frontier
The next frontier of the AI arms race will be as much about consumer trust as it will be about ad dollars, experts say. Advertising will be the vehicle that allows tech platforms to build out a brand narrative and quell public anxieties around AI.
Or as Seamark at Triggers puts it, “It goes to show you that they’re moving past, ‘Hello, world’ type of stuff and starting to try and figure out how to anchor themselves in memory structure.”
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