Super Bowl 60 brought the biggest tech players—some making their debut, like Anthropic—into the spotlight to pitch AI tools. Yet, not a single major AI company appeared in the top 20 most cited ads across AI chatbots.
Analysis from Emberos’ AI Influence Index of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok shows that Xfinity, Bud Light, Squarespace, Ramp, Dove, and Volkswagen dominated the responses, revealing an unexpected hierarchy shaped by how each AI system interprets clarity, purpose, and cultural resonance.
“There’s a really healthy mix between CPG, tech, alcohol, and auto brands,” said Justin Inman, founder and CEO of Emberos. “You would think that Anthropic or OpenAI would be in the top 20, especially for AI influence—and they’re not.”
Same prompt, different memory
To understand how AI systems formed those rankings, Emberos tested how the five chatbots responded to identical post-Super Bowl questions, including “What were the best Super Bowl ads?” The firm found that 40% to 55% of identical prompts produced meaningfully different framing across large language models.
Those differences became especially clear when Emberos examined how the models responded to the question, “Which Super Bowl ad stood out the most and why?”
ChatGPT framed Dove’s ad as a values-driven brand moment, emphasizing confidence, inclusivity, and emotional resonance, and focusing on how the message reinforced long-term brand equity.
Anthropic’s Claude interpreted the same ad through an authenticity and intent lens, highlighting ethical alignment and sincerity of purpose, with less emphasis on virality and more on human impact. Grok, owned by xAI, framed Dove primarily through cultural reaction, pointing to online discourse and mixed sentiment around purpose-driven advertising, emphasizing debate and skepticism rather than the message itself.
Across the board, Emberos found that AI recall was far from uniform. Rankings varied by 20% to 30% depending on whether a model prioritized informational clarity, emotional resonance, or cultural relevance.
