Occasionally, the gap between an ad's intended message and how it's perceived isn't visible until it airs.
According to Business Insider, this was the case with a Super Bowl commercial for Ring doorbell cameras.
What's happening?
Since the inception of the Super Bowl, advertising during the Big Game has been nearly as notable as the plays and outcomes.
Amazon-owned doorbell camera company Ring clearly intended its Super Bowl LX spot to be heartwarming, highlighting the devices' purported ability to locate missing dogs.
On Feb. 2, Ring (@ring) uploaded the commercial to YouTube, emphasizing an artificial intelligence-powered function called Search Party.
As Business Insider noted, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (@ajassy) tweeted at length about "compelling use cases [for] AI" ahead of the game. He described the "lost dog" functionality as "energizing," saying Ring "helped bring home 99 dogs in just 90 days."
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However, commenters laid bare the public's feelings about Ring's surveillance capabilities.
Why was Ring's Super Bowl commercial concerning?
In the advertising world, no televised event is as consequential as the Super Bowl, and corporations spare no expense to maximize their time slots.
Consequently, millions of viewers saw Ring's ad, which the company evidently believed would strike a chord — and it did, just not the one it thought it would.
Broadly, public opinion on AI functionality is deeply conflicted; job seekers, teachers, and artists have lambasted it and quibbled with it, and communities near data centers have raised their own objections.
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$200 or more 💰 Data centers pose a separate problem, particularly because their ever-escalating power demand has driven up electric bills nationwide. But AI's ability to surveil citizens at scale is yet another issue, as TikTok user dumbbirchtree (@dumbbirchtree) emphasized.
"Are you seeing this s***?" the user twice asked. "America now exists in a police state. You cannot convince me otherwise."
Commenters agreed.
"Yeah, this is for ICE searches. Time to ditch that company," one remarked.
"Everyone should cancel immediately," another advised.
Replies to Jassy's tweet were similar, with a user warning that such AI features could endanger people fleeing abusive situations.
"It's ok we're surveilled 24/7 because sometimes people find their dogs faster," someone else quipped.
"Nice way to start a mass surveillance product and label it as dog rescue. GTFO," another said.
"If you think this is all that AI-powered surveillance will be used for, you're delusional. If you know otherwise but continue to push it, you're evil. This is one of the most disgusting ways to normalize this abuse of privacy I've ever seen," a fourth person wrote.
What's being done about it?
The near-unanimous disdain for Amazon's Ring Super Bowl ad offered a fascinating glimpse into public opinion on AI and surveillance tech.
Pressuring lawmakers for AI oversight works: In the second half of 2025, communities successfully stopped nearly $100 billion in planned data center development.
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