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- A since-deleted Reddit post claimed to leak footage of an OpenAI Super Bowl ad featuring its AI devices.
- In the supposed ad, actor Alexander Skarsgård shows off an orb-shaped device and earbuds.
- OpenAI said the ad is "totally fake."
On first glance, a recent Reddit post looks like the sort of PR nightmare that would give any tech company cold sweats: a disgruntled employee leaks a shelved Super Bowl ad revealing some highly anticipated products and a big-name celeb.
But it's all a hoax, according to OpenAI.
Greg Brockman, the AI company's cofounder and president, moved to quickly denounce a now-deleted viral Reddit post that claimed to have footage of a shelved Super Bowl ad featuring actor Alexander Skarsgård with fancy earbuds and a reflective metallic orb device called "Dime."
"fake news," Brockman wrote on X on Sunday night.
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Business Insider that the ad was not real.
"Totally false! Not OpenAI, not connected to us at all. Fake news," the spokesperson said.
The Reddit post claimed that OpenAI opted to air its real Super Bowl ad featuring Codex instead of the device ad.
OpenAI is working on AI devices, but it hasn't revealed much when it comes to details. But it did recruit a huge name to lead its efforts.
Last year, CEO Sam Altman and former Apple design chief Jony Ive jointly announced that they had been collaborating for years. OpenAI also purchased Ive's AI hardware startup for roughly $6.5 billion.
In November, Ive said a device will be available in less than two years. Altman said during the same joint appearance that he wants the device's simplicity to cause people to say, "That's it."
"Like it is so simple, but then it just does, as we were talking about, AI can do just so much for you that so much can fall away," Altman said during a panel with Ive moderated by Laurene Powell Jobs. "And the degree to which Jony has chipped away at every little thing that this doesn't need to do or doesn't need to be in there is remarkable."
Many users were duped by the supposedly "leaked" ad, including Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who seemed to suggest the social media platform had once again gotten the scoop on major news.
"Oh, Reddit. You've done it again," Ohanian wrote on X. "The ad is beautiful btw, they should've run this one."
"This is totally fake," OpenAI's Lindsay McCallum Rémy, who works in its communications department, responded.
AI was front and center during what is historically the most-watched live televised event in the US, and thus the biggest day for advertising. In the days leading up to the big game, Altman criticized rival Anthropic for airing what he said was a "deceptive" ad that subtly poked fun at OpenAI's plans to add ads to lower tiers of ChatGPT.
OpenAI did air a Super Bowl ad. In its second-ever spot during the big game, the company touted Codex, its coding-focused agent, which has a new model and an accompanying Mac OS app.
The ad begins with a child's finger tracing a cobweb and intersperses images of a classroom, robot hands, someone loading a Linux disc into an old computer, and even the famous photo of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue, before culminating in the message: "You can just build things."
