Google Slammed Over “Soul Crushing” AI Olympics Ad

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Google has been blasted for a commercial touting its Gemini AI tool, with viewers describing the ad as completely “soul crushing.”

The minute-long video was aired over coverage of the Olympics and features a young girl who is a big fan of American Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

The girl’s father is seen in the commercial saying “She might even be the world’s number one Sydney fan.”

Then comes the kicker.

The ad shows the girl turning to Google’s Gemini AI to help understand running and hurdling techniques.

OK, that’s not so inherently bad, but the father might have done his own research and at least put on a show of interacting with his daughter.

But then it gets worse.

The father notes that his daughter “wants to show Sydney some love, and I’m pretty good with words, but this has to be just right,” before again turning to the AI, this time to write a letter to the Olympian for the girl.

The backlash was immediate, even from leftists.

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??

— Linda Holmes (@lindaholmes.bsky.social) Jul 27, 2024 at 5:48 AM

Professor Shelly Palmer of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications noted “This is exactly what we do not want anyone to do with AI. Ever.”

Have you seen Google’s “Dear Sydney” Olympic ad featuring a father using Gemini AI to help his young daughter write a fan letter to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? It is one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve ever seen. To be clear, I love the idea of a young aspiring athlete… pic.twitter.com/FFohdVBbut

— Shelly Palmer (@shellypalmer) July 29, 2024

The globalist technocrat mindset is that children shouldn’t have to think for themselves and the human authenticity factor of a child’s imagination wasn’t even a consideration.

I think we can all agree that the big loser of the #Olympics is the Google Gemini AI ad where they think an AI-written letter is better than a sweet note from a young girl to her favorite athlete.

— Kaitlyn Arford — Freelance Writer (@kaitarford) July 28, 2024

The Google Gemini letter writing commercial is one of the worst possible use cases for AI I can imagine.

Way to teach your kid they don’t need to have an original thought or a genuine interaction with another human.

— Sidney Pegula (@sidneypegula) July 28, 2024

The ad reminded some of Apple’s iPad app from earlier this year, which saw musical instruments, art materials, cameras and basically anything creative being literally crushed in a giant mechanical press and replaced with the tablet.

They’e seemingly proud to be destroying human imagination, creativity and talent.

It was so bad, Apple had to apologise and scrap plans to broadcast it.

Google’s Gemini also has a raft of other problems going on with it.

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