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An advertisement for Google's Gemini AI chatbot, seen in a cell phone photo in New York City, has sparked an online backlash from many who believe AI should not be used to replace human creativity.
new york
CNN
—
Remember that childhood experience we all have of writing fan letters to our idols? (Mickey Mouse, I hope you still have the note I gave you at Disneyland in 1999.)
Well, a new ad from Google says artificial intelligence can do it for you. It's not going to be very well received.
If you haven't seen it yet, check out the TV ad that aired during the ad. Suspend In an Olympic video, a father describes his daughter's crush on American track and field star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, and how, thanks to tips on hurdling technique generated by Google's AI search feature, she is training to compete like her hero. “She wanted to show Sydney some love,” she said, and asked Google's Gemini chatbot to compose a letter from her daughter to McLaughlin, including one in which the girl said she was “going to break the world record.”
The ad demonstrated the ability of Google's AI tools to generate increasingly human-like text, which the company says can be used for everything from writing business emails to planning trips. But to many critics online, the ad seemed like the latest example of big tech companies becoming disconnected from real people. The ad sparked dozens of posts on Threads, X, LinkedIn and more, with many people asking, “Why would we try to replace a child's creativity and authentic expression with computer-written words?”
It's a major misstep for the tech giant, which is positioning Gemini as its answer to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT and working to embed AI techniques across its entire suite of products, including Google Search and Gmail.
“This Google ad in which a father has his daughter use AI to craft a message to her favorite athlete, rather than encouraging her to write what she would actually want to say to her hero, eats away a little more of my soul every time I watch it,” Will Leitch, writer and founder of sports blog Deadspin, told X in a post that has been reposted more than 3,000 times.
“These people are losing it,” another person said of the ad in a post on the thread, calling AI ads in general “just embarrassing.”
A Google spokesperson said in a statement that the company believes “AI can be a fantastic tool to enhance human creativity, but it can never replace it.”
“Our goal was to create an authentic story that celebrates the U.S. National Team,” the statement reads. “The story aims to showcase a real-life track and field enthusiast and his father and to show how the Gemini App can provide a starting point, thought spark, or early draft for anyone looking for writing ideas.”
The backlash highlighted broader fears about artificial intelligence as it permeates more areas of our lives. Tech companies have promised that AI will make our lives easier by freeing humans from the need to do menial tasks that computers can do, like grocery shopping, coding, and translation, freeing them up to spend their time on more meaningful activities. But many of the earliest AI tools have done the opposite, enabling computers to produce art, music, stories, and other creative artifacts traditionally performed by humans.
Some creatives, including musicians and visual artists, have already warned that AI will replace them — an issue at the heart of last year's Hollywood writers strike — and have sued tech companies for using their copyrighted works to train AI models.
But tech companies are rolling out AI tools that can create new emojis, speak and even generate videos.
“I categorically reject the future that Google is touting,” Shelley Palmer, a professor of advanced media at Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School of Public Communication, said in a blog post Sunday. “I want to live in a culturally diverse world where billions of people use AI to enhance their human skills. I don't want to live in a world where we are used by AI that pretends to be human.”
Apple faced similar backlash earlier this year when it released an ad set to Sonny and Cher's “All I Need Is You” in which symbols of human creativity — paint cans, musical instruments and a sculpture of a human head — were crushed in a giant hydraulic press and replaced with an iPad Pro. Apple quickly apologized, saying the ad “missed the mark.”
Google did not respond to CNN's request for comment about the backlash against Gemini's ads.
