Google AI ad rankles some Olympics viewers

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Google irked some watchers of the Olympic Games over the weekend with an ad showing its artificial intelligence program help a girl write a letter to her sports idol.

The "Dear Sydney" ad, intended to adorably tout capabilities of Google's Gemini AI, featured a dad warmly describing how the tool wrote his daughter a letter to US hurdler Sydney Michelle 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.

"It is one of the most disturbing commercials I've ever seen," Syracuse University professor of advanced media in residence Shelly Palmer said in a blog post. "This is exactly what we do not want anyone to do with AI. Ever."

Palmer contended that the commercial suggests a poorly worded prompt to a generative AI tool can express a person's feeling better than they could do it themselves.

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"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?"

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.

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 did not reply to a request for comment.

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