When I first saw Google's latest ad, I thought, “Is it just me, or is this a bit much?” By the fourth or fifth time I saw it, I wasn't wondering anymore.
It starts off innocent enough, with a father talking about how much his daughter loves Sydney McLaughlin-Lebron (she's “maybe even the biggest Sydney fan in the world”). She wants to write a fan letter to the Olympic gold medalist and needs her dad's help. And that's where things take a turn.
Yes, this is an ad for Google's Gemini AI. So the dad says to Gemini, “Help me write a letter to Sydney telling her how much my daughter inspires her. And please make sure to mention that she plans to break a world record someday. (Say sorry, don't say sorry.)”
Now, if you squint your eyes, you can see how this fits into the overall pitch for generative AI. It could be a writing coach or assistant, especially for people who find writing difficult or scary. And what could be scarier than writing a letter to your favorite athlete?
But it's hard to come up with anything that conveys genuine inspiration. Less It’s better than telling an AI to tell someone how inspiring they are. Of course, Gemini is only generating a first draft that the father and daughter will (hopefully?) personalize. But if this happened in real life, Sydney would have a giant pile of nearly identical letters.
Novelist and host of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast Linda Holmes put it this way: “Of course there are special circumstances and people who need help, but the general narrative of, 'Hey, how cool is that, she didn't even have to write anything herself!' sucks. Who wants fan letters written by an AI??”
Plus, as Holmes puts it, “Fan letters are a great way for kids to learn how to write! If they're not good at writing yet and you're encouraging them to run to an AI and spit out words, how are they going to learn?”
I agree. Sadly, I will never be an Olympic athlete. But believe it or not, even tech bloggers rarely get compliments. And I many I would rather receive a simple email written by a human that just says, “You’re awesome!!” than a detailed, formal letter written by AI.
None of this is quite the same as Apple pouring all of humanity's achievements into the iPad, but it does suggest that there are challenges to presenting AI as something useful to the average person.
