The Super Bowl is among the most expensive and high-profile marketing opportunities of the year in the US.
During the event, tennis champion Serena Williams featured in an advert for telehealth company Ro’s weight loss jab, saying she was 34lbs down and “healthier” thanks to the product.
Some fans took to social media to express their disappointment.
“We’re cooked,” one social media user posted on X, “the greatest female tennis player of all time is on Ozempic”, referring to the brand name of a different GLP-1 drug.
Another pointed out that Williams could be “doing so much to champion women’s sports or the importance of body positivity but instead is pushing a weight loss drug in her retirement.”
Williams, who won 23 grand slam titles, has previously spoken about her use of weight loss jabs. Her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanion, is an investor in the company she advertises.
Meanwhile, AI companies featured heavily among the adverts. The AI company Anthropic ran an advert for its AI assistant Claude, with the commercial lobbing what appears to be some implicit criticism at rival AI software ChatGPT.
The Anthropic Super Bowl ad features a man talking to a therapist about how to communicate better with his mum – the kind of query a user might put to ChatGPT.
The therapist initially responds with some common-sense suggestions for the user, before jarringly veering into what appears to be a dating service for older women.
It then ends with the slogan: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”
Among other ads for AI products was an Alexa commercial, with a storyline focused on a rogue AI assistant. Scenes include a man – played by Chris Hemsworth – in his house accusing the Amazon AI product Alexa+ of plotting against him, with Alexa+ closing a garage door on his head and shutting the pool cover while he swims.