Feared or Celebrated, Amazon Alexa Is Star of Super Bowl Ads
- The encroachment of technology is key theme of commercials
- Robots take center stage in ads for TurboTax and Sprint
The Los Angeles Rams take the field prior to kickoff at Super Bowl LIII.
Photographer: Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesAn android child struggles to control his emotions. Robots threaten to take away human jobs. And a voice-activated device ponders its own existence.
These dark themes were explored by this year’s Super Bowl commercials, with brands such as TurboTax, Olay and Sprint capitalizing on fears that technology is encroaching on our lives. The unspoken subject of many of the ads: Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa, an increasingly ubiquitous digital assistant sold by one of the world’s most powerful companies.