The NBA Finals showcase some of the best basketball the NBA has to offer every year, but they're also one of the premiere advertising events in professional sports.
The Finals may not stack up to the level of the Super Bowl, but some unique commercials make their debut for the NBA's championship series. This year, one ad is standing out for its use of AI.
Kalshi, a prediction and exchange company that allows users to gamble on anything from politics to sports, debuted an 'unhinged' AI-produced commercial for Wednesday's Game 3 between the Pacers and Thunder.
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Here's a look at Kalshi's AI advertisement for the NBA Finals.
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Watch Kalshi AI-produced commercial for NBA Finals
Here's a look at Kalshi's NBA Finals commercial, which was produced by AI:
The world’s gone mad pic.twitter.com/VmoDLbwk1v
— Kalshi (@Kalshi) June 11, 2025
Kalshi AI commercial during NBA Finals, explained
The commercial cycles through AI-generated people from differing hypothetical locations, based on the prop-bet that Kalshi would allow users to make. For example, there's a clip of a man saying "Indiana, got that dog in 'em!" while the odds for the Pacers to win the championship appear at the bottom of the screen.
Highlighting Kalshi's brand, which allows people to bet on things like egg prices and weather, there are some pretty interesting AI clips included, such as an alien at a party drinking beer while the odds for "U.S. confirms aliens?" appear at the bottom.
To explain all the random AI clips, the commercial then explains that Kalshi allows you to "trade on anything, anywhere in the U.S.," including Oklahoma City and Indiana, where the two 2025 NBA Finals teams play.
On X, one user named PJ Ace, who describes himself as an "AI Filmmaker," posted that he was hired to make the commercial and did so in just two days.
"Kalshi hired me to make the most unhinged NBA Finals commercial possible," he wrote. "High-dopamine Veo 3 videos will be the ad trend of 2025."
Kalshi hired me to make the most unhinged NBA Finals commercial possible.
— PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo) June 11, 2025
Network TV actually approved this GTA-style madness 🤣
High-dopamine Veo 3 videos will be the ad trend of 2025.
Here’s how I made it in just TWO DAYS 👇🏼 (Prompt included)pic.twitter.com/XcT3m7CROL
He then posted a breakdown of how he made the commercial, saying he wrote a script, used it to create a shot list and prompts, used Veo 3 to make the clip, then edited it himself. Ace described the final product as "GTA-style madness," with him focusing on using Veo 3 AI to showcase Kalshi's brand through "crazy people doing crazy things."
He also wrote on social media that in order to get the final product, it took around "300–400 generations to get 15 usable clips" from the AI over the course of two or three days.
One of Kalshi's employees, Tarek Mansour, added on X that a commercial that would usually take "seven figures" and "months" to create took the company just 48 hours.
We are launching our first-ever fully AI produced TV commercial ahead of Game Three tonight, which will air throughout the game.
— Tarek Mansour (@mansourtarek_) June 11, 2025
Our team went from idea to implementation in less than 48 hours, leveraging @PJaccetturo and his team's AI filmmaking expertise to develop a crazy… https://t.co/jX0a1VljFS
The Kalshi AI commercial debuted during Game 3 of the NBA Finals, with one of the main focuses of the advertisement being the series between Oklahoma City and Indiana.
What is Kalshi?
According to its website, Kalshi is "the first CFTC regulated exchange dedicated to trading on the outcome of future events. From inflation, to fed rates, to unemployment, to will the government shut down, Kalshi allows people to trade on a broad range of topics."