OPINION: Google’s tone deaf Olympics-themed ‘Dear Sydney’ ad for its Gemini AI platform has drawn almost universal backlash from across the world wide web.
If you haven’t seen it – and fortunately, UK readers might have missed it as there are no ads on the Beeb’s Olympic coverage – consider yourself fortunate. It’s liable to make you quite angry, as it does I everytime NBC takes a break from its Games coverage.
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The ad showcases a father asking Gemini for help to write a letter on behalf of his daughter – a seemingly talented young runner – to her hero, the American 400m hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
In narrating the commercial, the father says he’s “pretty good with words, but this has to be just right”. So, rather than sitting with his daughter to help her craft the letter together, in her own words, he instructs Gemini to “Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone how inspiring she is.”
What?
The dad ad-libs that the letter should be sure to mention that daughter says she’s coming for Syney’s world records one day (She says: “sorry, not sorry”). We don’t see the full contents of the letter, presumably because it isn’t very good.
Anyway, the ad appears to have done the unthinkable, and drawn condemonation from across the internet. Various prominent commentators have decried the way the ad robs the child of being able to express her own creativity, by defaulting to the AI to do so.
The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri gloriously wrote: “I hate the Gemini ‘Dear Sydney’ ad more every passing moment,” and proclaimed a desire to take a sledgehammer to the telly.
She writes: “What will these buffoons come up with next? “Gemini, propose for me”? “Gemini, tell my parents I love them”? Lying on your death bed, “Gemini, write a letter to my children saying all the things I wish I’d been able to tell them”? “What was my favorite thing about being alive?”
Alexandra also says, pointedly: “To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself.”
Meanwhile, NPR’s Linda Holmes writes: “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. Sit down with your kid and write the letter with them! I’m just so grossed out by the entire thing.”
Furthermore; Shelly Palmer, a media professor at Syracuse University, adds: “The father in the video is not encouraging his daughter to learn to express herself. Instead of guiding her to use her own words and communicate authentically, he is teaching her to rely on AI for this critical human skill,” Palmer wrote.
Even Gemini itself thinks the ad sucked, as the AI admitted to an Axios journalist. You can see the answer, actually expressed quite well, below.
The condemnation is a stark reminder of how Silicon Valley continues to force feed generative AI tools like Gemini down the throats of a consumer base that has never once asked for this means of discouraging human creativity, that is systematically undermining those who make their living that way.
Please… make it stop.
