The advent of AI has led to existential fears for various activities and professions, with everyone from artists to journalists raising concerns over the tech's ability to replace their work with a slightly shoddier version. And now it seems even childhood fan letters are facing the chop.
In a woefully misjudged Olympic ad, Google saw fit to demonstrate the power of Gemini, its generative AI model, by showing it being used to compose a fan letter to a child's favourite athlete. Instead of, you know, the child writing the letter themselves. Writing a letter can be a delightfully creative act (you can even choose one of the best free fonts!), but it seems Google thinks the whole thing is a waste of time.
The ad depicts a father describing in narration his daughter’s adoration for American Olympic star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. It shows the young girl training to compete like her hero (using training tips from Google’s AI search feature, of course). Then the dad says “she wants to show Sydney some love,” and asks Google Gemini to generate a letter from his daughter to McLaughlin.
Like Apple's recently misjudged iPad ad, Google's effort is being seen as a silicon valley titan promoting the destruction of creativity. "The Google commercial where the dad has his daughter use AI to construct a note to her favorite athlete rather than encourage her to write what she actually wants to tell her hero takes a little chunk out of my soul every time I see it," one X user comments.
Have you seen Google’s “Dear Sydney” Olympic ad featuring a father using Gemini AI to help his young daughter write a fan letter to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? It is one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve ever seen. To be clear, I love the idea of a young aspiring athlete… pic.twitter.com/FFohdVBbutJuly 29, 2024
Seeing that Google Gemini AI ad really hurt my heart as someone who has taught writing to many young kids. Suggesting a child that young should use AI to write a letter to their Olympic hero is a suggestion to steal important experiences from that childJuly 28, 2024
I think we can all agree that the big loser of the #Olympics is the Google Gemini AI ad where they think an AI-written letter is better than a sweet note from a young girl to her favorite athlete.July 28, 2024
From Adobe's terms of service debacle to the Dungeons and Dragons disaster, we've seen plenty of AI controversies over the last few months – Google is simply the latest tech giant to fall off the tightrope of reputational management when it comes to the tech. But as a small UK cinema recently proved, it is possible to come out of an AI crisis unscathed.
