Google, one of the main sponsors of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, has sparked criticism over their Olympic AI ad, created in support of Team USA.
The controversial Olympic AI ad is titled “Dear Sydney,” and it features a father using Google Gemini to help his daughter write a letter to her favorite athlete, Sydney McLaughling-Levrone.
Google’s ad has sparked criticism over the use of AI for something as personal as writing a letter. Social media users have said Google is actively trying to replace human emotion with AI-generated content, such as the letter in the ad.
Google’s AI ad was also criticized by marketing experts
Social media users were not the only ones who scrutinized Google’s AI ad. Academic voices have also added to the intense scrutiny of Google.
Perhaps the most critical voice in the space is Professor Shelly Palmer. He is the CEO of the Palmer Group and a leading consultant in strategies and solutions for Fortune 500 companies.
He also runs a blog named ShellyPalmer.com in which he wrote a post called, “Why Google’s Dear Sydney Ad Makes Me Want to Scream.”
In the blog post, Professor Shelley explained: “To be clear, I love the idea of a young aspiring athlete inspired by an Olympic athlete. That’s awesome.”
However, he expressed concern over the intended message of the ad, saying, “This is exactly what we do not want anyone to do with AI. Ever.”
Professor Shelley was especially critical of Google’s ad, deliberately making “misleading promises of AI’s capabilities.”
In relation to this concern, Shelley said: “The commercial suggests that a poorly worded prompt, processed by a pattern-matching autocomplete algorithm, can empower an LLM to articulate a person’s feelings better than the person themselves.”
This once again brings communications experts’ concerns over the use of AI for personal tasks such as letter writing to the forefront.
The “Dear Sydney” ad was compared to Apple’s AI ad “Crush”
It’s becoming abundantly clear that AI and, by extension, AI ads are here to stay, and Google is not the first company to face backlash over these ads. It likely won’t be the last either.
In May, Apple was also criticized for a similar ad titled “Crush.” This ad was negatively received because it depicted a hydraulic press crushing various creative tools such as guitars and cameras.
The ad prompted high-profile creatives, such as Hugh Grant, to label the message of the ad as negative because “it called for the eradication of human creativity.”
However, the similarities don’t stop there. This mounting backlash prompted both Google and Apple to apologize. A spokesman from Google told AdAge that “the company believes AI can be a valuable tool to push human creativity, but it will never replace it.”
Similarly, in May, Apple also issued a public apology. The California tech giants said the “Crush” ad missed the mark and also reiterated their commitment to celebrating human creativity.
