The 2024 Paris Olympics Games are underway, and so is Google’s Gemini advertising blitz. You can hardly tune in without seeing a commercial for Google’s generative AI tools, but you won’t be seeing one of the ads anymore. Google has decided to pull one of its spots following a bit of a scolding from the internet at large.
The ad in question is called “Dear Sydney,” and it features a little girl who wants to write a fan letter to US hurdler and sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Sweet, right? Well, it might be if the little girl was actually writing said letter. Instead, Google’s cold, artificial large language model handles all the heartfelt stuff from a writing prompt: “Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is.”
There have been numerous ads for AI showing machines creating content that a person really ought to be able to handle themselves, but this ad seems to have touched on something even more uncomfortable for viewers. That might be because of the voiceover—the little girl at the center of the ad doesn’t say a word. Instead, it’s her father who tells the story, noting that he’s good with words but “this needs to be just right.” Most parents would see helping their kid write a letter to an Olympian as a bonding experience, an opportunity to build memories and help their child learn something. But no, in this example, Google wants you to use Gemini.
The response to the ad has been largely negative. In one prominent analysis of the ad, Syracuse University professor Shelly Palmer called out Google for its vision of a “monocultural future” where humans have outsourced their creativity to robots. And they’re not even very good robots. Gemini, like all generative AI systems, are just language models. They don’t know the difference between truth and fiction, nor can they truly be creative. They simply remix the content of training data based on your inputs.
Google tells CNBC that Dear Sydney tested well before it was released, but it has still opted to remove it from its Olympic ad rotation. You can still see the ad online (embedded above) to judge for yourself. Google claims that it sees Gemini’s output as a “starting point” for further writing ideas, and it only wanted to “create an authentic story celebrating Team USA.”
The tech giant stopped short of apologizing for the ad, however.