Winning the AI race isn’t just about getting artificial intelligence features right. It’s also about winning the hearts and minds of people who will use these products. Google just gave us a good example of how not to win any hearts or minds. As impressive as Gemini AI innovations might be, Google’s “pizza glue” Search fiasco will not be forgotten. And now Google can add one more bad idea to the list of AI misteps: The Gemini ad running everywhere during the Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
Everybody hates Google’s new commercial. The Google ad is so bad that Google turned off comments on YouTube. It’s so bad that you’d think Gemini came up with it.
Google Gemini isn’t as good as Google wants it to be at this point. To be fair, neither is OpenAI’s ChatGPT or any other competitor. We have not reached the point where generative AI is as good as these companies want it to be. Needless to say, no ad should suggest that they are.
The one-minute clip tells the story of a proud dad whose young daughter is training hard so that one day, she might have a chance at breaking the record of her idol, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
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Gemini then comes up in various ways that help the dad help his daughter. For example, the AI can assist him with teaching her hurdle technique. I’d still advise the dad to check the sources, maybe use prompt variations, and compare results.
So far, so good. We’re in the early days of genAI products and AI personal assistants, but we must use them. They can be helpful despite their glaring imperfections.
Here’s where Google drops the ball, however. The dad, who is good with words, wants to help his daughter write a letter to her hero to express her love for Sydney. He thinks the letter has to sound just right, so he resorts to Gemini to get the job done. He’s good with words, though, so why?
This is why people, yours truly included, hate the ad, Google!
Yes, Gemini is good for all sorts of tasks, writing included. But the audacity of telling audiences that Gemini can get a heartfelt letter that should evoke feelings “just right” is something else.
At a philosophical level, we’re looking at an existential issue for humanity. Google tells us that humans are no longer needed for creative tasks involving sentiment. That’s one of the nightmares that the genAI revolution brought along. The fear that AI will not just take our jobs, but that it could cause catastrophic events that would endager our very own existence.
At a simpler level, Google tells us that it’s okay to cheat your way into getting things “just right” with AI. Adults might see the problem with the ad, but kids will not. Some of them will understand that Gemini and other AI products can help them speed through homework without putting in the necessary effort that will help them down the road.
The irony is also pretty clear here. Cheating your way through writing assignments with the help of AI might one day prevent you from writing good prompts to AI to get what you need from it.
Also, why even involve the dad at this point? The daughter could have done it without any help from the dad. He is just a middleman who can introduce her to Gemini AI. On that note, don’t let kids access genAI on their own. But I digress.
Back to the ad, AI doesn’t have a heart, sadly. It won’t get that letter to Sydney “just right,” whether it’s Gemini, ChatGPT, or Apple Intelligence. We’ll have to wait a while for that.
The whole thing feels like the result of a prompt asking Gemini to imagine a heartfelt Olympics TV ad about the Games whose real focus is actually Gemini AI. I can’t wait for the obvious response to this ad: a hero athlete uses Gemini to issue a heartfelt reply to the kid’s AI-generated emotional letter. Communication between people failed. Mission accomplished.
You can watch the full ad below, but sadly, you can’t comment on it. On that note, we’ll never know how many dislikes the ad received, either. That’s how YouTube works now. And then Google gets mad that people want to block ads on YouTube.