Google Pulls Controversial AI Ad "Dear Sydney" from Olympic Broadcast Amid Public Backlash

Google Pulls AI Ad That Irked Some Olympics Viewers

Google confirmed Friday that it had pulled an ad for its Gemini artificial intelligence after it landed flat with some Olympics viewers. The "Dear Sydney" ad, intended to tout capabilities of Gemini AI, featured a dad warmly describing how the tool wrote his daughter a fan letter from her to US hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. However, some viewers bashed the ad as promoting the notion that parents should coax their children to rely on AI rather than learn to express themselves. "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation," a Google spokesperson told AFP. Social media posts fired off on an array of platforms questioned whether the ad signaled a dystopian future in which human creativity atrophies due to AI. Syracuse University media professor Shelly Palmer said the commercial suggested that a poorly worded prompt to a generative AI tool can express a person's feeling better than they could themselves. "This commercial showing somebody having a child use AI to write a fan letter to her hero sucks," author Linda Holmes wrote in a post on BlueSky. "Who wants an AI-written fan letter?" Tech evangelists have touted the promised benefits of AI, but teachers, musicians, artists and others have accused its creators of training advanced computers to replace them. Early this year, Apple had an ad stumble of its own with a commercial showing musical instruments, paint cans and other creative gear crushed and replaced by an iPad to the tune of a song titled "All I Ever Need Is You."

Public Outcry Leads Google to Pull 'Dear Sydney' AI Ad from Olympic Broadcast

Google has removed its 'Dear Sydney' ad for its Gemini AI after the public called it out for being a bit off-base with the ad. The 60-second ad features an allegedly real father and daughter. The daughter is a huge fan of Olympic track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and wants to write a fan letter to her. All good so far. However, then the father in the ad asks Gemini to write the letter for her, listing off a series of bullet points for the AI to hit, including that his daughter plans on beating her record one day. Backlash for the ad was pretty much immediate, with commenters pointing out that while there certainly might be a time AI could be useful in letter writing, writing a heartfelt letter to ones hero probably isn't it. In a statement to Variety, a Google representative said that the ad had tested well before it aired. It also defended the use of AI by the dad in the ad. "We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity but can never replace it," the rep said. Our goal was to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA. It showcases a real-life track enthusiast and her father and aims to show how the Gemini app can provide a starting point, thought starter, or early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing."

Google pulls AI ad that irked some Olympics viewers

San Francisco (AFP) - Google confirmed Friday that it had pulled an ad for its Gemini artificial intelligence after it landed flat with some Olympics viewers. The "Dear Sydney" ad, intended to tout capabilities of Gemini AI, featured a dad warmly describing how the tool wrote his daughter a fan letter from her to US hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. However, some viewers bashed the ad as promoting the notion that parents should coax their children to rely on AI rather than learn to express themselves. "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation," a Google spokesperson told AFP. Social media posts fired off on an array of platforms questioned whether the ad signaled a dystopian future in which human creativity atrophies due to AI. Syracuse University media professor Shelly Palmer said the commercial suggested that a poorly worded prompt to a generative AI tool can express a person's feeling better than they could themselves. "This commercial showing somebody having a child use AI to write a fan letter to her hero sucks," author Linda Holmes wrote in a post on BlueSky. "Who wants an AI-written fan letter?" Tech evangelists have touted the promised benefits of AI, but teachers, musicians, artists and others have accused its creators of training advanced computers to replace them. Early this year, Apple had an ad stumble of its own with a commercial showing musical instruments, paint cans and other creative gear crushed and replaced by an iPad to the tune of a song titled "All I Ever Need Is You."

Google pulls 'Dear Sydney' Gemini AI ad after online backlash

Oof. It's a real AI doozy. Credit: Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images) Apparently using Google Gemini to write a fan letter in the voice of a little girl doesn't sit well with people. Google has pulled its "Dear Sydney" ad after major backlash that criticized Google for misjudging how much the public values genuine human expression. The ad features a father using the Google Gemini chatbot to help his daughter write a fan letter to Olympic track and field star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. "I'm pretty good with words," says the father, "but this has to be just right." Cue Gemini, and a fan letter written entirely by a bot that, being a bot, can't possibly understand concepts like admiration, inspiration, or just the experience of being a human child. "We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, but can never replace it," said a Google spokesperson in a statement to Mashable. "Our goal was to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA. It showcases a real-life track enthusiast and her father, and aims to show how the Gemini app can provide a starting point, thought starter, or early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing." But given the negative reaction online, Google missed the mark. The ad's message is offset by a recurrent theme in the generative AI era: companies have eagerly adopted generative AI in the hopes of attracting users. But in a classic case of a tech solution in search of a problem, they've sometimes repulsed consumers, and have struggled to find applications that prove genuinely useful. Earlier this week Meta scrapped its celebrity AI personas, while Taco Bell has expanded its AI voice automated ordering system despite McDonald's failings with a similar experience. Even if Gemini nailed the tone and successfully mimicked the tone and age-appropriate literacy of the little girl, people online were horrified by the premise of using AI to write a fan letter. "It is one of the most disturbing commercials I've ever seen," posted Shelly Palmer, professor of advanced media at Syracuse University Newhouse School. "This is exactly what we do not want anyone to do with AI. Ever." "I cannot think of a less inspiring ad. What is even the point of sending that letter," posted X user @chikkadee. "Re: Google's 'Dear Sydney' AI Ad - much like Apple's Crush, the question we need to ask ourselves isn't 'what can AI/texhn do for us?'" wrote another user @Aerocles referring to a similarly tone-deaf ad from Apple that literally crushed creative tools. "But 'what role do we want it to play in our lives?' Just because AI can do something, doesn't mean we want it to." Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri was so infuriated that she wrote an entire column about it saying, "This ad makes me want to throw a sledgehammer into the television every time I see it." It's hard to summarize all the ways the public feels Google's ad fell short. Whether it's coming under fire for implying that automated text is more valuable than children's expression, or discouraging kids doing their own writing, or simply signaling to parents that this is a good use of generative AI, there are so many issues. But the Los Angeles Times's Ryan Faughnder encapsulated the overall mood pretty well in a post on X: "Turns out it's really hard to market apocalyptic A.I. technology."

Google pulls AI ad that irked some Olympics viewers

SAN FRANCISCO: Google confirmed Friday that it had pulled an ad for its Gemini artificial intelligence after it landed flat with some Olympics viewers. The "Dear Sydney" ad, intended to tout capabilities of Gemini AI, featured a dad warmly describing how the tool wrote his daughter a fan letter from her to US hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. However, some viewers bashed the ad as promoting the notion that parents should coax their children to rely on AI rather than learn to express themselves. "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation," a Google spokesperson told AFP. Social media posts fired off on an array of platforms questioned whether the ad signaled a dystopian future in which human creativity atrophies due to AI. Syracuse University media professor Shelly Palmer said the commercial suggested that a poorly worded prompt to a generative AI tool can express a person´s feeling better than they could themselves. "This commercial showing somebody having a child use AI to write a fan letter to her hero sucks," author Linda Holmes wrote in a post on BlueSky. "Who wants an AI-written fan letter?" Tech evangelists have touted the promised benefits of AI, but teachers, musicians, artists and others have accused its creators of training advanced computers to replace them. Early this year, Apple had an ad stumble of its own with a commercial showing musical instruments, paint cans and other creative gear crushed and replaced by an iPad to the tune of a song titled "All I Ever Need Is You."

Google kills "Dear Sydney" Gemini AI ad after intense backlash

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone may never get that robot fan letter now It appears that villainy has been defeated, as Google is pulling its "Dear Sydney" Gemini AI ad from the ongoing 2024 Paris Olympics coverage. The ad featured a dad talking about his daughter's excitement for track and field star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Toward the back half of the commericial, the father uses the Gemini AI assistant to help his daughter write a fan letter to Sydney. "Quiet simply, the Google Gemini ad enrages because it embraces and celebrates the very worst things about AI-powered tools," Tom's Guide's managing editor for mobile Philip Michaels wrote. "If this is how Google is hoping to sell the capabilities of AI in general and Gemini in particular to a dubious public, it's badly missed the mark." As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Google is one of the major sponsors for the Olympics, alongside Samsung who provided custom Z Flip 6 phones to Olympians. Google and Samsung have teamed up to push AI and AI tools hard with the Gemini assistant as one component. The ad is below for your reference. A Google spokesperson told THR, "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation." We find ourselves more than a little curious who they tested this advertisement with. This is just the latest in a series of poorly considered advertisements from major companies who don't seem to understand what people want from their tech. Apple had to pull the infamous "Crush" ad in May when the internet responded negatively to the iPad commercial, which showed a giant hydraulic press crushing various objects to symbolize creativity. Apple had meant to demonstrate how much it had packed into its new thinner iPad Pro models, but audiences viewed the ad as Big Tech essentially smashing creativity out of existence. In June, the zombified Toys'R'Us caused controversy with it's OpenAI Sora-created commercial that was supposed to be a nostalgic trip down toy memory lane. Instead, it opened the hedge fund-ruined shell retailer to accusations of using AI in a "horrible way" and exposed the uncanny valley.

Google Pulls Bad Gemini Olympics Ad About Writing an AI Letter

We may earn a commission when you click links to retailers and purchase goods. More info. For those of you who watched the early Olympics coverage, you might have seen an ad from Google that has since been pulled. The "Google + Team USA -- Dear Sydney" spot was yanked from their Olympics rotation, but can still be seen on YouTube and is embedded below. Why pull this ad featuring Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? Well, it really missed the mark, to put it nicely. The ad tells the story of a father and daughter who are into running. The daughter has started to follow McLaughlin-Levrone's career, because she's pretty awesome and an incredible track athlete. The dad decides they should write a fan letter to Sydney, only instead of sitting down and writing it together, they lean on Gemini to do almost all of the work. See how that's bad? Instead of writing a letter from the heart, with whatever creativity they can muster, and putting pen to paper from scratch, they ask Google's AI for help. It sets a weird (and bad) example for people by suggesting AI - instead of their own brain - could do something as meaningful as writing a letter to a hero. From the minute the ad launched, criticism of it could be found all over the internet, and probably rightly so. Google said in a statement to Variety today "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation." They continued by suggesting they aren't attempting to replace creativity and were instead suggesting folks use Gemini to get a little help from the start: "We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, but can never replace it. Our goal was to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA. It showcases a real-life track enthusiast and her father, and aims to show how the Gemini app can provide a starting point, thought starter, or early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing."

Google pulls its terrible pro-AI "Dear Sydney" ad after backlash

Have you seen Google's "Dear Sydney" ad? The one where a young girl wants to write a fan letter to Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? To which the girl's dad responds that he is "pretty good with words but this has to be just right"? And so, to be just right, he suggests that the daughter get Google's Gemini AI to write a first draft of the letter? If you're watching the Olympics, you have undoubtedly seen it -- because the ad has been everywhere. Until today. After a string of negative commentary about the ad's dystopian implications, Google has pulled the "Dear Sydney" ad from TV. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the company said, "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation." The backlash was similar to that against Apple's recent ad in which an enormous hydraulic press crushed TVs, musical instruments, record players, paint cans, sculptures, and even emoji into... the newest model of the iPad. Apple apparently wanted to show just how much creative and entertainment potential the iPad held; critics read the ad as a warning image about the destruction of human creativity in a technological age. Apple apologized soon after. Now Google has stepped on the same land mine. Not only is AI coming for human creativity, the "Dear Sydney" ad suggests -- but it won't even leave space for the charming imperfections of a child's fan letter to an athlete. Instead, AI will provide the template, just as it will likely provide the template for the athlete's response, leading to a nightmare scenario in which huge swathes of human communication have the "human" part stripped right out. "Very bad" The generally hostile tone of the commentary to the new ad was captured by Alexandra Petri's Washington Post column on the ad, which Petri labeled "very bad." This ad makes me want to throw a sledgehammer into the television every time I see it. Given the choice between watching this ad and watching the ad about how I need to be giving money NOW to make certain that dogs do not perish in the snow, I would have to think long and hard. It's one of those ads that makes you think, perhaps evolution was a mistake and our ancestor should never have left the sea. This could be slight hyperbole but only slight! If you haven't seen this ad, you are leading a blessed existence and I wish to trade places with you. A TechCrunch piece said that it was "hard to think of anything that communicates heartfelt inspiration less than instructing an AI to tell someone how inspiring they are." Shelly Palmer, a Syracuse University professor and marketing consultant, wrote that the ad's basic mistake was overestimating "AI's ability to understand and convey the nuances of human emotions and thoughts." Palmer would rather have a "heartfelt message over a grammatically correct, AI-generated message any day," he said. He then added: I received just such a heartfelt message from a reader years ago. It was a single line email about a blog post I had just written: "Shelly, you're to [sic] stupid to own a smart phone." I love this painfully ironic email so much, I have it framed on the wall in my office. It was honest, direct, and probably accurate. But his conclusion was far more serious. "I flatly reject the future that Google is advertising," Palmer wrote. "I want to live in a culturally diverse world where billions of individuals use AI to amplify their human skills, not in a world where we are used by AI pretending to be human." Things got saltier from there. NPR host Linda Holmes wrote on social media: This commercial showing somebody having a child use AI to write a fan letter to her hero SUCKS. Obviously there are special circumstances 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 an AI-written fan letter?? I promise you, if they're able, the words your kid can put together will be more meaningful than anything a prompt can spit out. And finally: A fan letter is a great way for a kid to learn to write! If you encourage kids to run to AI to spit out words because their writing isn't great yet, how are they supposed to learn? Sit down with your kid and write the letter with them! I'm just so grossed out by the entire thing. The Atlantic was more succinct with its headline: "Google Wins the Gold Medal for Worst Olympic Ad." All of this largely tracks with our own take on the ad, which Ars Technica's Kyle Orland called a "grim" vision of the future. "I want AI-powered tools to automate the most boring, mundane tasks in my life, giving me more time to spend on creative, life-affirming moments with my family," he wrote. "Google's ad seems to imply that these life-affirming moments are also something to be avoided -- or at least made pleasingly more efficient -- through the use of AI." Getting people excited about their own obsolescence and addiction is a tough sell, so I don't envy the marketers who have to hawk Big Tech's biggest products in a climate of suspicion and hostility toward everything from AI to screen time to social media to data collection. I'm sure the marketers will find a way -- but clearly "Dear Sydney" isn't it.

Big Tech keeps running ads accidentally suggesting it will replace all human creativity

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. The ad is narrated by the girl's father, who says that his daughter "wants to show Sydney some love, and I'm pretty good with words, but this has to be just right." "So Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is, and be sure to mention that my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day. (She says sorry, not sorry)," the father says in the ad. Unlike other videos on Google's YouTube page, the comments for the ad are turned off. On X, users called it "pretty horrifying." One critic said it takes "99% of the ethos and feeling out of one of the most heartfelt concepts known to man." "It should be written by her own hand in the imperfect, pure language of childhood adoration...... this is just so sad to me," the critic added. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider it pulled the ad from circulation. "While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation," the spokesperson said. Apple faced similar backlash for an ad it unveiled earlier this year that shows the entire sum of human creativity -- musical instruments, paints, sculpture, toys, chess, photography, and more -- being crushed in a giant hydraulic press and then transforming into the "most powerful iPad ever." "The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley," the actor Hugh Grant said on X, responding to the ad after its release. The backlash to the ads is rooted in fears that technology, and in particular AI, could replace human creators. The threat AI poses to jobs in Hollywood was a key concern among striking writers last summer.