It was about this time last week when I first saw that ad for Gemini, Google’s new artificial-intelligence chatbot. If you’ve been watching much of the Paris Olympics, you know the one I’m thinking of. The spot, called “Dear Sydney,” features a father whose daughter idolizes the American hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. His daughter “wants to show Sydney some love,” and while he describes himself as “pretty good with words,” the dad adds, “This has to be just right.”
“Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is,” he types, “and be sure to mention that my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day.”
I have never seen an ad that made me so thoroughly depressed about the product it was selling, and I watch Trump ads for my job. Why would you get a robot to write a fan letter from your daughter? What other meaningful personal interactions are we supposed to want to swap out with a multimodal large language model?
And apparently I’m not alone. For days I kept seeing people bring up the ad. New York magazine contributing editor Will Leitch wrote:
On Friday, Hollywood Reporter offered some good news: Google was taking the spot off the airwaves. We did it, Joe.
