Welcome back. An AI Bowl and an AI bubble aren’t incompatible.

Nobody knows yet how much AI will transform society, how fast it will happen or how it will look, exactly, but the Super Bowl’s annual vibe check gave us another piece of evidence last night that this thing is real.

The ads’ quantity and creative told the story in different ways.

• There was an extremely robust roster: Commercials promoted OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Alexa+, Google Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot AI, Salesforce’s AI-ified Slackbot, Genspark AI, Ring’s AI powered Search Party feature, Wix Harmony and Oakley Meta’s AI glasses.
• And the advertised abilities were broad: Ads promised tech to write code, evaluate linebacker prospects, build websites, use family photos to design a backyard garden, finish spreadsheets and presentations, solve puzzles, book cinnamon scrubs and assist extreme athletes (sample prompt: “Is it OK to eat mud?”). Svedka even provided a living case study by running a Super Bowl ad it said was generated primarily by AI.

None of which disproves an AI bubble—for investors, at least.

The Dot Com Bowl of 2000, when Pets.com romped through Super Bowl ad breaks six weeks before the start of the dot-com crash, provides a possible precedent. Startups collapsed, trillions of dollars in market cap disappeared and… the internet went on to change everything.

You can even buy pet food online.

If you missed an ad break during last night’s Super Bowl or were just too riveted by all those field goals, these honors will catch you up.

Best spin on surveillance creep: Ring’s ad offering to scan the neighborhood’s camera feeds for your lost dog —Patrick Coffee

Most unfortunate ad trend: Dogs in peril—lost or, in the case of TurboTax’s pregame ad, dead —Katie Deighton

Most pop-culture Easter eggs crammed into one minute: Dunkin’s rapid-fire mashup of “Good Will Hunting,” “Friends,” “A Different World,” “Cheers” and more. —Megan Graham

Most popular cinematic effect: 35mm, or simulations thereof. See: Squarespace, Pringles, Grubhub, Instacart, Redfin, Hims & Hers… —KD

Biggest hint that the singularity isn’t near: Svedka’s AI-generated dancing robots, which were somehow less convincing and more terrifying than many recent AI attempts to depict real humans —PC

Shiniest spoon at a knife fight: OpenAI’s artful commercial for its Codex coding agent, eclipsed in the ad break immediately following by Anthropic’s funny, savage attack on chatbots that serve ads  —Nat Ives

Biggest surprise for ad reporters: Coinbase’s hush-hush return to the Super Bowl, its first appearance since the bouncing QR code of 2022. —MG

True-believers-only award: Coinbase’s nothing-but-Backstreet Boys karaoke screen. Intended takeaways include “crypto is for everyone,” but they were probably most legible to the already converted  —PC

My last choice to take a bite out of Big Food: Mike Tyson, once disqualified from a boxing match for biting off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear, chomping on an apple as he delivers MAHA Center’s message about processed food —NI

Unofficial fave of the ad execs in my text inbox: Xfinity’s witty and nostalgic “Jurassic Park” spot —MG

Lawyers’ biggest moment: State Farm’s legal disclaimer helpfully reminding viewers that its clearly parodic “Halfway There Insurance” is “not a real insurance provider and cannot sell insurance products, provide insurance services or conduct insurance business in any jurisdiction” —KD

Most-asked question of the night among women aged 18 to 35: Why was beauty influencer Alix Earle in the Bad Bunny halftime show? (We haven’t cracked this ourselves yet, so tell us if you know the answer.) —KD

Most expensive URL: AI.com, which reportedly cost Crypto.com owner Kris Marszalek $70 million (and crashed after its Super Bowl ad). Emma Stone, last night seen desperately seeking EmmaStone.com for Squarespace, should be so well-funded. —PC

• Bad Bunny used joy to put out a political firestorm during Super Bowl halftime—almost. President Trump called it “an affront to the Greatness of America.” [WSJ] 
   
• Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show” counterprogramming attracted as many as 6.1 million concurrent viewers on its YouTube channel. [The Athletic]   
   
• Bad Bunny wore Zara. [Vogue] 
   
• A faked Ad Age article circulated before the game purportedly reporting that OpenAI had changed its Super Bowl creative at the last minute.
   
• Anthropic did change its Super Bowl ad between releasing it last week and running it during the game last night, replacing the concluding lines, “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” with “There is a time and place for ads. Your conversations with AI should not be one of them.” 
   
• Next year’s Super Bowl falls on Valentine’s Day, for the first and possibly the last time. Expect a flood of cross-promotion and candlelit dinners replaced by romantic pre-game brunches. [WSJ] 

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Washington Post Publisher Will Lewis left the paper days after cutting a third of the staff, capping a tumultuous tenure. Finance chief Jeff D’Onofrio, a previous CEO of Tumblr and CFO at creator media firm Raptive, was named acting publisher and CEO. [WSJ] 

The Washington Post had to shelve a planned ad campaign using “We the People” as a slogan after MS NOW used it first. [Semafor]

NewsGuard sued the FTC for pressuring Omnicom out of using journalism ratings services like its own. [Washington Post] 

Ultra-luxury hotels are extracting record room rates from the ultra-rich with amenities like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, sound baths and dry-float beds. [FT]

AT&T introduced a $210 smartphone for kids. [BI]