“Dear Sydney” Ad from Google Gemini Ruffled A Few Feathers

Letter writing is a lost art. Think about it. When was the last time you handwrote or typed a personal letter and dropped it in the mail? When was the last time you received a real letter in the mail?

Maybe Google’s AI assistant (Gemini) can help to bring letter writing back into fashion. Seems like an innocent enough idea. Yet, the feel-good Team USA commercial where this idea is unveiled is receiving some blowback.

Let’s watch the spot, which features one of America’s track & field superstars, Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, a helpful and caring father, and a cute little girl.

The father prompts Google Gemini to help write McLaughlin-Levrone a note on his daughter’s behalf. “I’m pretty good with words, but this has to be just right,” the dad says. Because the bar is set so high, he seeks “a little help.”

According to an article by Grace Snelling in Fast Company, the “ad that affects sincerity while seemingly suggesting that a child’s creativity should be replaced with words from an AI program…and major companies like Google have yet to grasp how public hesitance around increasingly powerful technology will impact the reception of ads like ‘Dear Sydney.'”

What Do Viewers Think?

WTOP News in Washington, DC asked its viewers to respond to the ad. “I struggled with that commercial,” one man said. “Some things are just fundamental, and being able to speak and write and think and convey your messages is absolutely critical.”

Another man saw it as an opportunity to educate on the new tools. “The whole idea is to teach people how to use the tools and not pretend that the machine knows best. It’s you who knows best.”

When it comes to AI, knowing what’s best is also an environmental imperative. According to a recent article in Wired “…the computing processes required to run generative AI systems are much more resource intensive. This has led to the arrival of the Internet’s hyper-consumption era, a period defined by the spread of a new kind of computing that demands excessive amounts of electricity and water to build as well as operate.”