‘Dear Sidney‘ or ‘Dear Sidney’ is the title of an advertisement for Google that American television has been airing in recent days. The production aims to promote the company’s generative AI, Geminiand take advantage of the current events Olympics that are being celebrated in Paris to tell a story that aims to touch the viewer’s heartstrings. But judging by the reviews it has received, it has not done so in the way Google expected. There have been so many, in fact, that The company has withdrawn it from broadcast for this reasonas he acknowledged to The Hollywood Reporter.
‘Although the ad was well received in pre-airing tests, given the opinions, We have decided to remove it from our Olympic rotation.‘, Google told the outlet. The announcement follows Google’s usual philosophy selling emotions when you’re supposed to be talking about technologyin this case exemplified in the history of A young girl who admires American Olympic runner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone who trains with her father to be like her.
The young athlete wants to write him a letter, which is something fans of any celebrity have done all their lives without any major complications, but the father, who says he is ‘pretty good with words’ wants ‘this to be perfect’. And what’s the way to make it perfect? Have the admirer open her heart and express her feelings? Help her not to make spelling mistakes? Give her some ideas? All that must be very 20th century for Google, Now the answer is for a machine to write it.Gemini, and then add the fan’s name at the end. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is sure to be moved to tears by the result.
The backlash has been similar to what he faced Apple a few months ago with an advertisement in which a giant hydraulic press crushed televisions, musical instruments, record players, paint cans, sculptures and even emojis to leave the last one in its place iPad. Apple apparently wanted to show off the iPad’s great creative and entertainment potential, but critics They interpreted the announcement as a warning about the destruction of human creativity in this technological age.Apple apologized shortly afterward for a rather far-fetched controversy, since the most obvious intention of the promotion was to present it as a device so versatile that it could replace everything that came before. Debatable, but it doesn’t seem like an attack on human creativity either.
Much clearer is this case, in which the heart of a story that wants to be ‘human’, in the sense used by advertisers, is replaced by the generic text that an AI can provide. removing all the emotion that it could have and, precisely, the human part of all this.
Criticism has been plentiful in the American media. The Washington Post called it ‘very bad’ And TechCrunch has noted that it is ‘hard to think of anything that communicates less sincere inspiration than instructing an AI to tell someone how inspiring they are.’ NPR claimed that the ad ‘stinks’ and The Atlantic headlined ‘Google wins gold medal for worst Olympic ad’.