When I saw Google’s newest ad for the first time, I thought, “Is it just me, or is this kind of bad?” It stopped making me wonder after the fourth or fifth time I saw it.
It all starts with a dad telling his daughter how much he loves Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and that she “might even be the world’s number one Sydney fan.” She wants to write a love letter to the Olympic gold medallist, but she needs her dad’s help. That’s when things get weird.
Yes, this is an ad for Google’s Gemini AI, so the dad tells Gemini, “Help my daughter write a letter to Sydney telling her how inspiring she is. In the letter, make sure to say that my daughter plans to break her world record one day.” (She doesn’t say sorry.)”
It could be a writing coach or assistant, especially for someone who finds writing hard or scary. If you look closely, you can see how this fits into the general pitch for generative AI. And writing a letter to your favourite athlete? That sounds like a lot of work.
Telling an AI to tell someone how amazing they are, on the other hand, is about as far from genuine inspiration as you can get. Yes, Gemini is just writing the first draft, which the dad and his daughter will (hopefully) make their own. In real life, though, Sydney would just end up with a huge stack of letters that are very much the same.
Author Linda Holmes, who hosts the podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, said it better: “There are special cases 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 AI?”
“A fan letter is a great way for a kid to learn to write!” Holmes said again. How are kids supposed to learn if you tell them to use AI to spit out words because their writing isn’t good enough yet?
I agree. Shamefully, I will never be an Olympic athlete, but you wouldn’t believe it, but tech bloggers do sometimes get nice comments. And I’d much rather get a short email from a real person that just says “YOU’RE GREAT!!” than a long form letter written by AI.
Also Read: Openai Shows Off Searchgpt With Google in Mind
All of this isn’t as bad as Apple putting all of humanity’s successes into an iPad, but it does show that it might be hard to sell AI as something useful for regular people.
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