‘This Jimmy Johnson AI video on Fox is straight out of Uncanny Valley,’ one social media user quipped. On Super Bowl Sunday, Fox Sports aired an AI-generated tribute to beloved NFL coach-turned-analyst Jimmy Johnson — but fans weren’t happy. Fox Sports honored 81-year-old Johnson, a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, with an AI-generated video chronicling each step of his career. The video showed Johnson throughout his life, from being a young assistant coach at Louisiana Tech in 1965, to leading the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Hurricanes before becoming an analyst for Fox.
Johnson narrated the video, but at times his voice didn’t quite line up with his AI-generated self, and fans were quick to critique it. The user was referring to the uncanny valley effect, the uncomfortable feeling evoked by artificial images that look not-quite-human. “What in the Polar Express are we doing with this Jimmy Johnson CGI pregame biopic,” another viewer wrote, comparing it to the 2004 movie with hyper-realistic animation that is often criticized for evoking the uncanny valley effect.
