TL;DR: The Seahawks won the big game, but it was really AI that ran the offense yesterday. Companies flooded the Super Bowl with ads full of vague promises of world-changing AI and the insistence that everything—from work to creativity to your personal fulfillment—was about to be reinvented. The parallel to crypto's 2022 blitz—and subsequent controversies and bankruptcies—is hard to ignore, especially given the public reception to last night’s AI onslaught was less excitement and much more confusion with a collective sigh of “not this again.”

What happened: Nearly a quarter of the Super Bowl ads this year were about AI, according to iSpot—including ones from OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Meta. Tech had the most ads, just above food and beverage spots (which included a fever dream Dunkin’ Donuts sitcom spoof starring Ben Affleck).

With each 30-second ad costing about $8 million to $10 million, AI companies likely spent more than double what crypto did in 2022, when crypto firms burned through $54 million on Super Bowl ads—Coinbase then spent the next year sparring with regulators, and FTX collapsed altogether.

Best in show: Our choice is Anthropic's now-famous spots mocking OpenAI's decision to introduce ads in ChatGPT. (We know Sam Altman has thoughts.) But Google's Gemini ad, about a family imagining what their new home might look like using AI, ranked first in the Kellogg School's annual Super Bowl ad review and struck a different tone than the rest of the AI ad overload by doing something radical: reassuring people of their AI anxieties.

Worst in show: The trophy for most head-scratching commercial of the night goes to AI.com, with an abstract montage of floating text and visuals promising that AGI is coming. CEO Kris Marszalek, founder of Crypto.com—yes, that Crypto.com—reportedly spent $70 million on the domain name alone. The website crashed immediately after the ad, likely because people were confused about what it actually is. (Its description is still very baffling.)

Worst runner-ups: Svedka’s almost entirely AI-generated ad had two androids dancing and flirting. Björk did it better in 1999. And our pick for worst non-AI ad: crypto’s ghost coming back to haunt us with a Coinbase commercial showing karaoke-style lyrics set to the Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody,” complete with a lyric swap claiming the exchange is “so secure.” Because “crypto is for everybody.”

The payoff (or lack of it): Not to be a Monday morning quarterback, but the ROI for the AI ad bonanza doesn’t seem great. Sports Illustrated reports that fans were vocally fed up before the first quarter ended. A Harris poll conducted before the game found that consumers already felt mostly negative about the prospect of more AI advertising. People are worried about what AI might do to their jobs, interpersonal relationships, and the environment, but by and large these commercials didn’t try to address those concerns. That, in turn, likely doesn’t help convince people already skeptical of AI to start applauding huge energy-hungry data centers or convince them to use agentic coding apps.

The broader AI marketing push comes as both OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing for potential IPOs later this year. Investors have already shown how wary they are about the industry’s aggressive spending, with Big Tech stocks falling in recent weeks due to their big AI spending plans in 2026. If 2022 taught us anything, it's that the Super Bowl is a lagging indicator of industry health, not a leading one. Then again, maybe this time will be different. That’s what the industry is banking its Super Bowl ad shopping spree on. —WK

Scanner, meet pocket

You already carry a scanner; it just happens to also take selfies. The iPhone Notes app can capture multipage documents and clean up that wrinkled receipt so it looks less “bottom of tote bag” and more “I have my life together.” Perfect for contracts, expense reports, medical forms, and any other paperwork that really should have been a PDF. The best part is that it’s fast, free, and built in. Auto mode grabs pages hands-free. Filters improve legibility, and everything lives in a note that you can share in seconds.

How to do it: Open the Notes app and create a new note → tap the Attachment button (paperclip) → Scan Documents → hold the document in view. In Auto mode, it captures automatically. For manual, tap the shutter button or a volume button, then drag the corners to perfect the crop and tap Keep. You can now add more pages, or tap the checkmark in the top right when done.

Optional glow-up: Use flash or filters (hello, readable contrast) before capturing.

Bonus: Need a signature in your PDF? Open the scan → tap the Share icon → Markup → then tap the Signature icon in the top left → place your signature and tap Done.

Congrats, you are now a one-person office—no scanner, no staples, no awkward trip to FedEx required. —LP

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Calling all influencers: Google and Microsoft will pay you up to $600,000 if you’re willing to gush about their AI tools on social media. The tech giants are offering between $400,000 to $600,000 for creators to shill Gemini and Copilot, according to a CNBC report on Friday. Other AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta have also made similar offers. This all tracks, given the AI industry is in the middle of a huge marketing push—it spent billions on digital ads in 2025. Lifestyle influencer Alix Earle partnered with Copilot last year, calling the AI agent her “mentor & therapist” in a video—either a strong endorsement or a cry for help.

We’ve all grown used to eyebrow-raising influencer sponcon, from “tummy-flattening” teas to the celebrity humiliation ritual that was Fyre Fest. But some creators are actually saying no to six-figure checks from Big AI. The reason? Audience backlash is real, and nobody wants to get canceled for #ad-ing the robot apocalypse. Other influencers are turning down the money due to their own objections to AI, which gets a lot of heat for potentially killing jobs, stealing intellectual property, and the environmental impacts of data centers. At least Lil Miquela, the space-bunned AI influencer with 2.3 million Instagram followers, will likely never have to post a Notes app apology for taking OpenAI’s money. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: /5