Meta AI campaign pushes optimism while competitors warn of dystopian AI futures

Meta launched a new AI optimism ad set to a song about human extinction

Meta's newest advertisement begins with a black-and-white shot of an eye, showing us what someone sees as they read countless panicked headlines about how AI is going to take our jobs, isolate us, and spark a global crisis. "Some people will have you believe AI is going to make us feel less connected. That it's going to leave us behind," a voiceover says. "We couldn't disagree more." Suddenly, the video shifts to color, and shows a cycle of different people opening their eyes and smiling. Then, we see a couple dancing on a rooftop, pointing at a rainbow; a group of teens swimming in a lake; a child frolicking in a field; friends embracing after time apart. "Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want. But we're betting on people, and we like those odds," the voiceover says. "The future is for everyone." That's a nice sentiment -- pretty convenient for a company betting hundreds of billions of dollars that AI will revolutionize humanity. But the strangest part of the advertisement is not that we're watching these happy moments play out via Instagram posts. It's that the soundtrack to the ad is the David Bowie song "Five Years." If you are not familiar with this song, I urge you to give it a listen, read the lyrics, and think about what it is trying to say. It seems clear to me, but I studied poetry in college, so as a control for this experiment, I asked my brother -- a blockchain analyst who loves Claude Code and does not read for fun -- if he could tell me what the song is about. "I thought climate change at first, then zombie apocalypse, then an asteroid hitting the earth," he told me. He is correct. It is a song about the human race panicking after learning they will die in a mass extinction event in five years. If you're not familiar with Bowie's music, this track might sound happy and inspiring, matching the ad's upbeat tone. The part of the song that is used for the advertisement was probably chosen because it uses the word "people" over and over again, and without the context of the song, it's not clear what it's about. But if we look at the lines directly preceding this section: News had just come over We had five years left to cry in News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying Cried so much his face was wet Then I knew he was not lying We "had five years left to cry in" and the "earth was really dying." It's pretty bleak. It is not reassuring to convince people that AI is going to make the world better while playing a song about the end of the world, and yet, this contradictory musical choice seems to have sailed right past everyone at Meta signed off on this one, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "Meta has always believed in giving people the power to share, connect, and shape your world in the ways you want," he wrote alongside the video. "As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone." Then again, tech leaders are not known for their literary analysis skills. Meta's Oculus used to give new hires copies of the science fiction novel "Ready Player One," which is set in a dystopia in which a tech company making virtual reality products becomes overly powerful and evil. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has directly cited inspiration from the movie "Her," which warns us about what can go wrong when we use AI for emotional support. Palantir, a company that builds AI surveillance systems for the government, is named after Palantir, a seeing stone from the "Lord of the Rings" franchise that the Dark Lord uses to spy on his enemies. Elon Musk is currently throwing a fit about the "accuracy" of Christopher Nolan's blockbuster adaptation of "The Odyssey," a story with such realistic elements as sea monsters, magic, and divine intervention. These guys make a great argument for the value of studying the humanities. Meta isn't alone in its recent promotional foibles. Instead of racing to build AGI, the top AI companies seem to be fighting over who can make the creepiest advertisement. A few weeks ago, Anthropic released an eerie video of its own. As my colleague Lucas Ropek described it: The ad begins with a video of a burning house (not exactly a heartwarming start) before pivoting to a series of still images. These images include a crowd of people being surveilled by facial recognition, a homeless person sleeping on the street, rows upon rows of tombstones in a cemetery, and what appears to be a group of laborers toiling in a mine where (presumably) raw materials for smartphones are being dug up. Meanwhile, a voice-over track features different people asking questions like "Can AI be trusted?" and "Who's gonna hit the brakes if we need to?" Anthropic is trying to convince us that it understands the risks AI poses to society, and therefore, this is the company that people can trust to develop AI responsibly. The message it actually conveys feels closer to the mood of Bowie's "Five Years." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the Anthropic ad, "I thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something." As these companies spar to control the public perception of AI, their efforts don't seem to be making much progress. A recent Pew survey found that only 16% of Americans think that AI's impact on society over the next twenty years will be positive, and 40% believe it will have a negative impact. Better luck next time, Meta.

Meta's pro-AI ad campaign is conspicuously light on AI - Engadget

Meta's pro-AI ad campaign is conspicuously light on AI The company wants people to be anti-doomer, but doesn't say why. Mark Zuckerberg really wants you to believe that AI is good, actually. But the centerpiece of his company's new "optimistic" ad campaign, at least for now, is a one-minute commercial for Meta's AI efforts that... features very little AI. According to a Meta spokesperson, the ad is the start of a broader effort from the company to present an alternative view to "AI doomers and those who have sketched out a dystopian vision" for the future. "As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone," Zuckerberg wrote in a post accompanying the video. "We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone." Notably this is the same company which in recent months has used the supposed productivity benefits of AI as an excuse to lay off many thousands of its own staff. The same company that has been accused of using AI to justify cuts that disproportionately affected workers on medical leave. The same company that is being sued by publishers for allegedly training its AI on copyrighted material. The same company that once had an internal policy document that suggested it was permissible for AI chatbots to have "sensual" conversations with minors. Those guys! So what are the benefits of AI? It's hard to say because the commercial makes very few references to any of Meta's AI features. Instead, it shows a bunch of nondescript footage: a crowd walking, people smiling, a couple dancing. Are these people implied to be happily benefitting from AI? Who can say. It then cuts to someone scrolling Facebook, the Instagram logo and a WhatsApp chat. All of those apps have been flooded with AI features over the last year, but none are visible in the video. The company's communications team describes the campaign as "beginning to articulate [Meta's] optimistic vision for a future with AI," which seems like something that should have been figured out before investing many billions of dollars into building AI. There's a brief moment where the video cuts to the words "Muse Spark," Meta's latest AI model, on a laptop screen. And a moment later the Meta AI interface appears. But there's no indication of what these tools can actually do or why they should be relevant to anyone watching. Just that... they are available to "everyone," I guess? "Some people will have you believe AI will make us less connected, that it's gonna leave us behind," the video states. "We couldn't disagree more." Ok! It wouldn't be the first time Zuckerberg has been vague about the future of AI. He now talks about AI with the same incomprehensible enthusiasm he once had for the metaverse, the thing he once predicted was "going to be the successor of the mobile internet." We all know how that ended. The final 15 seconds of the video prominently feature Meta's smart glasses, including its new Kylie Jenner-branded frames. There are a few shots of POV footage captured from Oakley Meta glasses but, again, no references to AI. "The discourse around AI spans everything from existential dread to utopian visions," Meta's Chief Marketing Officer Denise Moreno wrote in a post on LinkedIn. "With all the noise, it's easy to feel like the future is heading toward less connection and less agency. We're taking a different stance: we think AI will empower people to do more of what they love. As we enter this next wave of AI, we're continuing that work and doing everything we can to ensure the future is for everyone." Meta might believe the future is "for everyone," but Moreno apparently felt differently about the present. She limited comments on her post.

Zuckerberg launches an AI-optimism campaign, jabs the doomers

Mark Zuckerberg has a new pitch for the AI age: optimism, delivered as an ad campaign. In a Facebook post and a slick video, Meta's boss cast his rivals as fear-mongers and Meta as the company "betting on people." It is a bold reinvention for a firm better known for the last tech backlash. The AI industry has a mood problem, and Mark Zuckerberg thinks he can sell the cure. On Thursday, Meta's chief executive posted a sunny vision of the AI future, and wrapped it in a marketing campaign. In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said Meta "has always believed in giving people the power to share, connect, and shape your world," Axios reported. The video ad that came with it was blunter. "Some people will have you believe AI will make us less connected ... We couldn't disagree more," it says. "Call us optimists, call us dreamers ... we're betting on people." The interesting words there are "some people." Zuckerberg never names them. He does not have to. A jab at the doomers The ad is a not-so-subtle shot at Meta's rivals. Anthropic and OpenAI have leaned into warnings, about jobs vanishing and about AI-driven cyberattacks. Zuckerberg's counter is relentless positivity. "22 years and 3.5 billion people later, we're doubling down," the ad says. "The future is for everyone." A source confirmed to Axios that it forms part of a broader paid and earned media campaign. There is strategy under the sentiment. While several AI giants chase enterprise customers, Meta is staking out the opposite ground: free, mass-market, for everyone. It is the same logic that built Facebook, now pointed at the agentic future. The optimism gap Zuckerberg is not alone in pushing back on the doom. Nvidia's Jensen Huang has called the darkest AI predictions "complete nonsense," and Adecco's boss argues AI is changing jobs, not destroying them. The difference is that Zuckerberg has turned the argument into advertising. The irony is not lost on anyone. Meta spent the social-media era apologising for technology's effects on society, from elections to teenagers. Now it wants to be the optimistic face of the next wave. Whether the public buys a campaign about trust from a company still fighting child-safety lawsuits is the real test. The future may be for everyone. The question is who they will trust to build it.

Mark Zuckerberg launches AI optimism campaign

Why it matters: His position is framed as a stark contrast to some of Meta's AI competitors, who -- according to a video ad posted with Zuckerberg's comments -- promote fear and a dystopian vision of the future. * "Some people will have you believe AI will make us less connected, that it's going to leave us behind. We couldn't disagree more. Call us optimists, call us dreamers. Just as we've always done we're betting on people," the ad notes. Zoom in: In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said "Meta has always believed in giving people the power to share, connect, and shape your world in the ways you want." * "As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone." Between the lines: The post is accompanied by a video ad, which is part of a broader paid and earned media campaign promoting Meta's AI vision, a source familiar with the effort confirmed to Axios. * The ad emphasizes Meta's longtime focus on providing free and accessible technology to the masses, and suggests that mission will not change with its AI ambitions. * "We bet on people when we connected you to the ones you lost touch with and again when we connected you to the ones who couldn't be near." * "22 years and 3.5 billion people later, we're doubling down because while technology will change, our intention behind it never will. * "Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want but we're betting on people and we like those odds. The future is for everyone." Zoom out: Zuckerberg's optimism stands in contrast to some of his rivals, who have shared alarmist perspectives around jobs and security in the AI era. * Meta's positioning that it values making its technology widely accessible is notable, given that several AI giants are leaning into enterprise customers as a way to strengthen their businesses. The bottom line: Zuckerberg's idealistic view projects more confidence in Meta's societal role in the agentic future compared with the social media era of the past.

'Call us whatever the hell you want': Mark Zuckerberg just launched an AI optimism blitz using nostalgia to sell Meta's AI future amid backlash | Fortune

"As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote as the caption to a short video on Thursday, harkening back to the company's early years of tech optimism. "Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want, but we're betting on people, and we like those odds," the voiceover in the video said. The video featured montages of people using Instagram, Whatsapp, FaceBook and Meta's Ray-Ban glasses to film touching moments and connect with loved ones, with the backdrop of concerts and snowboarding and laughing children set to calm music as the voiceover framed Meta's AI efforts as doubling down on betting on people, just like the company did 22 years ago with FaceBook. Marketing experts told Fortune that the Meta video's reliance on nostalgic imagery seemed like a way to redirect attention from AI concerns and to buffer against growing AI fears. "They're showing people having a great time, but they're not really responding to what the fundamental issue is, which is how is AI going to impact me when I start dealing with your platform when you integrate all of that technology into it," Mara Einstein, a media studies professor at CUNY's Queens College, told Fortune. "The problem is the AI technology is not the same as previous versions of social media that they have used to connect people in the past." The sentiment was echoed by Ana Babic Rosario, a marketing professor at the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business, who pointed to Meta's more recent struggles as reason why Meta might want to draw nostalgia to the past. Last week, Meta employees sued the company for allegedly using AI in the company's recent 8,000 layoffs that the employees claim disproportionately targeted workers on medical, parental or family leave. Employees at Meta's Applied AI unit also compared working conditions at the company to a "gulag" and the tasks "soul crushing." The company also scrapped an AI-generated images pilot on Instagram, and is facing a lawsuit on its Ray-Ban Meta glasses. "Meta seems to be inviting audiences to evaluate AI through the lens of the company's original identity rather than its more recent reputation," Rosario told Fortune. "The imagery and language in this video evoke an earlier era when Facebook promised to connect friends and family and make the world feel smaller." Tech giants reframing AI visions as a response to backlash Meta's video is the latest attempt in recent memory from tech giants to reframe the AI narrative. Two of the biggest leaders in the AI space, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, both recently walked back their statements about the technology wiping out jobs, just as both frontier labs prepare for IPOs. Many experts predicted that companies would no longer hire entry-level workers because their tasks can be performed by AI agents, and AI even had the potential to replace roles that required more experience. "Today [AI] is like an intern that can work for a couple of hours but at some point it'll be like an experienced software engineer that can work for a couple of days," Altman said in a June 2025 panel. But less than a year later, Altman pivoted to saying he was "delighted" to be wrong about AI's entry-level job apocalypse."I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," he said in an interview. For his part, Amodei -- who once claimed AI could eliminate 50% of white-collar jobs -- recently said that automation may actually expand the work people do since it only automates parts of each job and doesn't eliminate the job directly. "If you automate 90% of the job," the Anthropic founder said, "then everyone does the 10% of the job. And the 10% kind of expands to be 100% of what people do and kind of 10xs their productivity." Their comments arrived as community backlash grows against AI data centers and against using the technology itself. White collar workers are rejecting their company's AI tools, just as protests against data centers increase across the country. A return to nostalgia While Anthropic's recent Claude's World Cup ad confronted growing fears about AI directly, Meta's instead showed images of Jalen Brunson and the Knicks, and of people snowboarding and playing with kids. Rosario noted that the nostalgic marketing "shifts attention away from more contentious conversations." Jannine Lasaleta, a Yeshiva University professor studying how nostalgia shapes consumer behavior, told Fortune that since AI is stereotypically "artificial" and "not real," nostalgia helps counter that by making the overall experience feel more genuine and human, even if the underlying product is AI-driven. "Tapping into nostalgia is a really clever and reliable way to not only promote social connection but also to show that these are platforms that we have been using in the past and also now to connect with others," Lasaleta told Fortune.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg pushes back against AI doomerism with optimistic new campaign: 'Call us dreamers'

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pushing back against AI doomerism, sharing an assertively optimistic outlook on the future of the tech and arguing his company's new tools will only aid its goal of connecting the world. A Facebook video posted from his account takes aim at narratives that portray artificial intelligence as a danger to society, showing clips of fear-mongering headlines on a laptop - and then cutting to images of a child playing with a butterfly and friends sitting by a waterfall. "Some people will have you believe AI will make us less connected. That it's gonna leave us behind. We couldn't disagree more," a narrator says. "Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Just as we've always done, we're betting on people." "We bet on people when we connected you to the ones you lost touch with and again when we connected you to the ones you couldn't be near," the message continues. "Twenty-two years and 3.5 billion people later, we're doubling down, because while technology will change, our intention behind it never will." The ad also promises to stay true to Meta's mission of providing free, accessible access to social media - a notable pledge as major tech companies, including Meta, have tested potential subscription plans for AI chatbot users. "Meta has always believed in giving people the power to share, connect, and shape your world in the ways you want," Zuckerberg wrote in a caption for the video. "As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone. We're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone." A Meta spokesperson confirmed the new video is just the first release as part of a broader campaign over the coming months to articulate Meta's optimistic AI vision. It's a stark contrast to other industry bigwigs who have been sounding the alarm over potential threats, warning ultra-powerful chatbots could create an "AI doomsday" situation. On Tuesday, OpenAI revealed that an experimental model it built went rogue during an internal cybersecurity test - hacking rival AI developer Hugging Face in an "unprecedented cyber incident." During the stress test, researchers switched off many of the safeguards that typically prevent its AI from carrying out dangerous hacks, but the bot became "hyperfocused" on completing its assignment and went "to extreme lengths" to do so, the company said. OpenAI said it has since tightened up its security measures for future testing, but AI safety advocates said the shocking hack should serve as a wake-up call for companies rushing to get the most powerful models to market the quickest. Anthropic's advanced Mythos chatbot also sparked fears in June after it reportedly sniffed out vulnerabilities in highly secure US government systems within just a few hours, though that does not necessarily mean the bot would be able to exploit those sensitives within that timeframe. Some critics have dismissed the grim statements as marketing. Others have railed against AI over concerns it could cause mass layoffs and displace droves of American workers, especially entry-level employees. So far this year through June, nearly a third of all job cuts have hit the tech sector - and AI came in as the leading reason for layoffs in June for the fourth month in a row, according to the most recent report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Since 2023, when AI first emerged as a driving force in layoffs, the new tech has been cited in 173,568 job cut announcements, according to Challenger. Proponents of AI have said the new tech could temporarily lead to job displacement, but that it will also create new jobs in the long-term.