“Who wants a fan letter written by AI?” asked writer Linda Holmes, among others.
Google’s “Dear Sydney” ad during the Paris Olympics was about the American company’s artificial intelligence program Gemini. You can see a little girl running. Her father says his daughter is a huge fan of American hurdler Sidney Michelle McLaughlin-Levron — and Gemini helped his daughter write a fan letter to her idol.
“This is one of the most annoying commercials I've ever seen.”
Many netizens then criticized it for implying that parents should teach their children to trust AI rather than express themselves. “This is one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve ever seen,” Shelley Palmer, a media professor at Syracuse University in New York, wrote in a blog post. “This is exactly what no one should do with AI. Ever.”
“The father in the video is not encouraging his daughter to learn how to express herself,” Palmer criticizes. “Instead of teaching her how to use her words and communicate authentically, he is teaching her to rely on AI for this basic human skill.” Google did not initially respond to the criticism when asked.
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