This AI Slop Ad Just Won $1 Million As Part of Grok’s Imagine 1.0 Game Day Contest

While the real show for the Super Bowl this year might have been the Bad Bunny halftime performance, which was much more exciting (or, at least, polarizing if you hate fun) than the game itself, there were others out there who might have been too busy to notice any of the festivities.

This is because they were hard at work creating their entries for the Grok Imagine Game Day Ad Contest, which was hosted on X. This game day ad contest was a quick turnaround contest that gave creators just 48 hours to create game day ads with Grok Imagine 1.0.

The winners have been announced, with the top prize taking home a $1 million prize. If you’re curious to see the results, you can check out what they look like below.

The State of AI Slop

As we’ve covered in the past, the world of AI in the film and video industry is breaking down into some distinct buckets. There are workflow assistance AI tools, there are AI platforms, and there are generative AI image and video models. This is important to us as the “AI slop” term, which we use to describe the sloppiness of fully AI-generated images and videos, really only applies to the last section.

And that’s what this contest is focused on. Similar to the results of Darren Aronofsky’s AI-slop revolutionary war show, even the best in the business are creating videos and ads that have all the characteristics of sloppiness, as the character models look awkward and unnatural, the lighting is inconsistent, and the sound is oddly synced.

All of these models and technologies will likely keep getting better, but it’s also looking likely that, for the immediate future, generative AI videos aren’t going to replace any true filmmaking forms in any meaningful ways.

Grok Imagine 1.0

Grok Imagine is another of the generative AI image and video models out there, which we haven’t covered much in the past, but is another player in a very crowded space that is capable of producing roughly the same level of sloppy video as we’ve seen from Sora, Veo, Kling, and others.

This contest was part of a campaign to kick off the announcement of Imagine 1.0, which boasts 10-second video creation, 720p resolution, and what the company calls "dramatically" better audio.

Grok Game Day Ad Winners

Far be it from us to tell you how to feel about the results instead of letting you judge for yourself. If you’re curious to see what the $1 million winning ad looks like, as well as the other top picks, which received major payouts as well, here are the results below.