Kalshi took AI ads mainstream with a bizarre AI-generated spot during the NBA Finals.
The ad cost just $2,000 and featured wild scenes: an alien chugging beer, a man in a cowboy hat holding a chihuahua, someone swimming in eggs. The bets shown were equally odd—like the Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Indiana Pacers winning the Finals, hurricane counts, and egg prices.
Kalshi hired AI filmmaker PJ Accetturo to make the spot using Google’s text-to-video tool Veo 3, which launched only weeks ago. Accetturo revealed it took 300–400 AI generations to pull 15 usable clips. 
PJ Accetturo explained the process in an X post:
“This took about 300–400 generations to get 15 usable clips,” Acetturo writes. “One person, 2-3 days. That’s a 95% cost reduction vs traditional ads.”
Accetturo details using Gemini to generate a shot list, then feeding 5 prompts at a time into Veo 3 to keep quality high. Final edits were done in CapCut or Adobe Premiere Pro.
This marks one of the first AI-made ads to hit major TV live events. Expect many more low-cost, surreal AI spots soon. Social media is already flooded with hard-to-distinguish AI videos, and giants like Amazon, Meta, and Netflix are pushing AI ad tech too.
Kalshi’s stunt shows AI-generated content moving fast into mainstream advertising with eye-popping results—and tiny budgets.
See the full ad and Accetturo’s X thread here.
