Google is back in the Super Bowl, and the new commercial for its Pixel 8 phone was partly filmed with a camera obscured by petroleum jelly, a choice blind director Adam Morse made to transport people into the point of view of a blind character.

The 60-second ad, which will run in the game’s second quarter, uses the practical blurring effect to demonstrate the Pixel phone’s AI camera tools that help visually impaired people take photos. Google today released a behind-the-scenes video about how the commercial came together, and plans to release the full spot in the coming days. Ad Age spoke with Morse and Google's creative team to discuss the spot.

The commercial, titled “Javier In Frame,” tells the story of a blind man who falls in love and starts a family. The journey from bachelor to fatherhood unfolds as the character takes selfies. Each photo starts by giving viewers the scene from the blind person’s perspective, and then it comes into focus with every camera click. 

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“When you’re dealing with a very specific point of view like this, one with a character who is blind … I think it is the only way to do it for it to become visceral and ultra-emotive,” Morse said in a recent phone interview.

“We frame it in a way the story is still telegraphed,” Morse said. “It’s still clear moment to moment, beat to beat, what’s happening. And that’s part of the trick, being able to create this authentic impression of blindness.”

Google’s Pixel 8 phone has “Guided Frame” technology, an AI assistant that tells the camera operator where to position the phone and what’s in the shot. The commercial starts with AI narrating as the character takes a selfie, “one face in frame.” By the end, he is in the delivery room, taking a selfie, and the AI alerts, “three faces in frame.”

“We were like, ‘OK, this is something no one’s ever seen before,” said Robert Wong, VP of Google Creative Lab, the in-house team that worked with Gut Miami on the commercial, “the perspective of someone with low vision.”

This is Google’s third consecutive Pixel ad in the Super Bowl. Google has been using its time in the game to showcase AI advances in its phones, a main theme for the company and industry as the technology becomes more available in consumer applications. Last year, Google’s commercial focused on “Magic Eraser,” which fixes photos. In 2022, Google highlighted “Real Tone,” a camera tool that captures people’s true skin colors.

Creative agency Gut worked on a behind-the-scenes film about this year's production, which follows Morse as he directs the commercial.

“Through losing my sight, it actually enhanced my vision and how I see things in my mind’s eye,” Morse said, “and tap into my imagination and see pictures in my head, it’s just about being able to communicate those ideas and that imagery with my team.”

Google’s Super Bowl commercials have alternated between serious subjects in the culture and more lighthearted ones. In 2022, the poignant spot for Real Tone showcased how the camera could work for people of all skin colors, and it won a Cannes Lions Mobile Lions award. Last year, the comedic spot starred Amy Schumer and Giannis Antetokounmpo, showing bloopers in photos getting undone by the Magic Eraser tool. This year, half of the ad shows scenes through the eyes of the blind main character.

“The whole idea behind capturing Guided Frame the way we did, with a first-person point of view,” said Daryl Butler, Google’s VP of devices and services, “was to make sure that folks understand that there are people who are visually impaired that actually still can enjoy all of the things that we take for granted.”