We show that Shipleys detection functor for symmetric spectra generalizes to motivic symmetric spectra. As an application, we construct motivic strict ring spectra representing morphic cohomology, semi-topological $K$-theory, and semi-topological cobordism for complex varieties. As a further application to semi-topological cobordism, we show that it is related to semi-topological $K$-theory via a Conner-Floyd type isomorphism and that after inverting a lift of the Friedlander-Mazur $s$-element in morphic cohomology, semi-topological cobordism becomes isomorphic to periodic complex cobordism.