OpenAI denounce hoax Alexander Skarsgård Super Bowl advert: “Fake news”
OpenAI have denied that a hoax Super Bowl advert featuring Alexander Skarsgård was set to promote one of their new products.
As the Super Bowl aired on February 8th, rumours swirled on social media that the AI company had scrapped the planned broadcast of an advert for their first-ever hardware product for earbuds, being modelled by Skarsgård.
This was seemingly backed up at the time by a Reddit post from an alleged OpenAI employee who expressed frustration at the advert being pulled from the air at the last minute. They then allegedly leaked the advert, showing Skarsgård wearing silver earbuds and picking up a pebble-shaped case for the product.
The slogan “Dime. Almost time” subsequently appeared in the advert, prompting speculation that this could be the AI company’s first official hardware product.
However, these rumours were quickly shut down by OpenAI’s CEO, Greg Brockman, who replied to a post on X about the Reddit thread by saying, “Fake news”.
This was reiterated by OpenAI’s spokesperson, Lindsay McCallum Rémy, who said: “This is totally fake”.
The confirmation of the hoax advert meant the lie quickly unravelled, with the poster of the Reddit thread transpiring not to be an employee for the AI company, and with many posts regarding the supposed product quickly being deleted.
At this point, it is not known how the fake advert was created using the extremely realistic likeness of Skarsgård.
Representatives for the actor have been approached for comment.
Elsewhere, in terms of real adverts shown at the Super Bowl, LCD Soundsystem have attracted controversy for allowing their song ‘Oh Baby’ to be used in a commercial promoting Elon Musk’s Starlink.
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