Google Pulls Gemini AI ‘Dear Sydney’ Ad After Online Criticism

Apparently writing a letter to a fan using the Google Gemini app in the voice of a little girl doesn’t sit well with many people.

Google has pulled its “Dear Sydney” ad following criticism that the company misjudged how much consumers value honest, human expressions.

The ad features a father using Google’s chatbot Gemini to help his daughter write a fan letter to Olympic track and field star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. “I’m pretty good with words,” the father says, “but it has to be perfect.” Tune in to Gemini and the fan letter is written entirely by the bot, which, as a bot, has no way of understanding concepts like admiration, inspiration, or the simple experience of being a child.

“We believe AI can be a great tool to augment human creativity, but it will never replace it,” a Google spokesperson told Mashable in a statement. “Our goal was to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA. It features a real-life track enthusiast and her father, and the goal is to show how the Gemini app can be a starting point, a seed of thought, or an early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing.”

But given the negative online reaction, Google missed the mark. The ad’s message is offset by a recurring theme in the era of generative AI: Companies have eagerly embraced generative AI in hopes of attracting users. But in a classic case of a tech solution seeking a problem, they’ve sometimes turned off consumers and struggled to find applications that actually prove useful. Earlier this week, Meta ditched its celebrity AI personas, while Taco Bell expanded its AI voice ordering system despite McDonald’s’ failures with a similar experience.

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Even though Gemini hit the mark and successfully mimicked the girl’s age-appropriate tone and literacy skills, people online were horrified by the premise of using AI to write a letter to a fan. “This is one of the most disturbing ads I’ve ever seen,” wrote Shelly Palmer, a professor of advanced media at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. “It’s exactly what we don’t want anyone to do with AI. Ever.”

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“I can’t imagine a less inspiring ad. What’s the point of sending this letter?” wrote user X @chikkadee.

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“Re: Google’s ‘Dear Sydney’ AI ad – like Apple Crush, the question we need to ask ourselves isn’t ‘what can AI/texhn do for us?’” wrote another user @Aerocles, referring to a similarly unempathetic Apple ad that literally crushed creative tools. “But ‘what role do we want it to play in our lives?’ Just because AI Power “Doing something doesn’t mean we want it.”

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Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri was so angry that she wrote an entire column about it, saying, “This ad makes me want to throw a sledgehammer at the TV every time I see it.”

It’s hard to summarize all the ways in which the public feels Google’s ad has failed. Whether it’s criticizing it for suggesting that automated text is more valuable than children’s expression, discouraging children from writing on their own, or simply signaling to parents that this is a good use of generative AI, there are so many problems. But Los Angeles TimesRyan Faughnder of ‘s summed up the general mood pretty well in a post on X: “Turns out it’s really hard to promote apocalyptic AI tech.”

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Topics
Google Artificial Intelligence