Google tried to incorporate the excitement of the Olympics into its chatbot Gemini, which was “fully tested before broadcast,” the company said. However, upon its debut, viewers were put off by the ad’s apparent inability to replace parenting and human creativity.
“Dear Sydney,” about a father who uses Gemini to help his daughter write a fan letter, was so negative that it prompted Google to phase it out of the airwaves.
“Our goal was to create an authentic story that celebrates Team America,” the tech giant told CNBC. However, after viewers provided feedback, Google said it “has decided to phase out the ads from our Olympic rotation.” The ad is still showing on YouTube and comments are turned off.
The ad centers on a father and a daughter who have “always been a runner” and look up to American hurdler and sprinter Sidney McLaughlin-Lefron. “She wanted to show Sydney some love, and I’m good with words, but it had to be just right,” a fatherly voice explained. So the father asked Gemini to help draft a fan letter to McLaughlin-Levrone. At that point, Eve’s “Who’s That Girl” jumped in (Eve’s publisher, Universal Music Group, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment). Then, in a whirl of sparkling graphics, Google’s chatbot produced a draft. The ad ends with the slogan: “With a little help, Gemini.”
Many people don’t like it! “This ad shows a person with children using artificial intelligence to write a fan letter to her hero, and it’s terrible,” Linda Holmes, host of NPR’s pop culture podcast, wrote on the social media site BlueSky. “The whole thing makes me feel really sick,” she said. One Washington Post columnist said it made her want to “throw a hammer at television.” The ad also attracted criticism on Reddit’s Daddit group, with some users calling it “vulgar” and “inhumane”.
Shelly Palmer, a senior media professor at Syracuse University’s School of Communication, said in an article that the ad exaggerated Gemini’s abilities and sent the wrong message to parents. “Google would have us believe that this young girl did not need to learn to articulate and describe her reality,” Palmer wrote. “This was an act of criminal negligence.”
The ad also appeared on Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s Instagram a week ago. “Do you really want to receive an AI-generated email?” one user asked. Some reviewers reacted more positively. “This brought tears to my eyes,” one user said. “[N]A more respectable person. Despite this, Google pulled the ad.
Advertisements from another tech giant have also been lackluster of late. In May, Apple sparked some outrage when it tried to promote the role of technology in promoting human creativity. The company’s “Crush” ad features an industrial crusher slowly crushing an array of creative objects, including paint buckets, a piano, books and a sculpture. When the crusher rises, it coolly leaves an iPad behind the object.
