Have you seen Google’s “Dear Sydney” ad? The one in which a young girl wants to write a fan letter to Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? To which the girl’s father responds that he’s “pretty good with words, but this has to precisely”? And to be like that preciselyhe suggests that the daughter let Google’s Gemini AI write a first draft of the letter?

If you follow the Olympics, you’ve no doubt seen it – because the ad was everywhere. Until today. After a series of negative comments about the ad’s dystopian implications, Google pulled the “Dear Sydney” ad from TV. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the company said, “While the ad tested well before airing, in light of the feedback we’ve received, we’ve decided to phase the ad out of our Olympic rotation.”

The backlash was similar to that to Apple’s recent ad, in which a giant hydraulic press crushed televisions, musical instruments, record players, paint cans, sculptures, and even emojis into… the latest iPad model. Apple apparently wanted to show how much creative and entertaining potential the iPad offers; critics interpreted the ad as a cautionary tale about the destruction of human creativity in the technological age. Apple apologized soon after.

Now Google has stepped on the same landmine. Not only does AI want to usurp human creativity, as the “Dear Sydney” ad suggests, but it doesn’t even allow room for the charming imperfections of a child’s fan letter to an athlete. Instead, AI will provide the template, just as it will likely provide the template for the athlete’s response, leading to a nightmare scenario in which large swathes of human communication have the “human” part completely edited out.

“Very bad”

The generally hostile tone of comments on the new ad was evident in Alexandra Petri’s column in the Washington Post, in which she called the ad “very bad.”

This ad makes me want to throw a sledgehammer at the TV every time I see it. If I had to choose between watching this ad or the one about how I need to donate money NOW to make sure dogs don’t die in the snow, I would have to think long and hard. It’s one of those ads that makes you think. maybe evolution was a mistake and our ancestor should never have left the sea. This may be a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one!

If you haven’t seen this ad, you live a blessed life and I want to trade places with you.

A TechCrunch article said it’s “hard to think of anything that conveys heartfelt inspiration better than telling an AI how inspiring it is.”

Shelly Palmer, a professor and marketing consultant at Syracuse University, wrote that the ad’s fundamental flaw was that it “overestimated AI’s ability to understand and convey the nuances of human emotion and thought.” Palmer would choose a “heartfelt message over a grammatically correct AI-generated message any day,” he said. He then added:

Years ago, I received an equally heartfelt message from a reader. It was a one-line email about a blog post I had just written: “Shelly, you are [sic] stupid to own a smartphone.” I love this painfully ironic email so much that I have it framed and hanging on the wall in my office. It was honest, direct, and probably accurate.

But his conclusion was far more serious. “I reject outright the future that Google is promoting,” Palmer wrote. “I want to live in a culturally diverse world where billions of people use AI to augment their human capabilities, not a world where we are used by AI to pretend to be human.”

Things got even more piquant from there. NPR host Linda Holmes wrote on social media:

That commercial showing someone using AI to write a kid a fan letter to their hero SUCKS. Of course there are special circumstances and people who need help, but as a general “look how cool she didn’t even have to write anything herself!” story, it SUCKS. Who wants a fan letter written by an AI?? I promise you, if your kid is able to do it, the words they can put together will be more meaningful than anything a keyword can spit out. And finally, a fan letter is a great way for a kid to learn to write! If you encourage kids to run to the AI ​​to spit out words because their writing isn’t that good yet, how are they supposed to learn? Sit down with your kid and write the letter with them! I just find the whole thing so gross.

The Atlantic’s headline was more succinct: “Google wins gold medal for worst Olympic ad.”

All of this is largely consistent with our own view of the ad, which Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland called a “bleak” vision of the future. “I want AI-powered tools that automate the most boring and mundane tasks in my life so I can spend more time on creative, life-affirming moments with my family,” he wrote. “Google’s ad seems to suggest that those life-affirming moments can also be avoided, or at least made more gratifyingly efficient, through the use of AI.”

It’s difficult to get people excited about their own obsolescence and dependence. That’s why I don’t envy the marketers who have to pitch Big Tech’s biggest products in a climate of distrust and hostility towards everything from artificial intelligence to screen time to social media to data collection. I’m sure the marketers will find a way – but “Dear Sydney” is clearly not the way to go.