Google's AI olympics ad is the definition of 'Yikes'

The advent of AI has led to existential fears for various activities and professions, with everyone from artists to journalists raising concerns over the tech's ability to replace their work with a slightly shoddier version. And now it seems even childhood fan letters are facing the chop.

In a woefully misjudged Olympic ad, Google saw fit to demonstrate the power of Gemini, its generative AI model, by showing it being used to compose a fan letter to a child's favourite athlete. Instead of, you know, the child writing the letter themselves. Writing a letter can be a delightfully creative act (you can even choose one of the best free fonts!), but it seems Google thinks the whole thing is a waste of time.

Google + Team USA — Dear Sydney - YouTube

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The ad depicts a father describing in narration his daughter’s adoration for American Olympic star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. It shows the young girl training to compete like her hero (using training tips from Google’s AI search feature, of course). Then the dad says “she wants to show Sydney some love,” and asks Google Gemini to generate a letter from his daughter to McLaughlin. 

Like Apple's recently misjudged iPad ad, Google's effort is being seen as a silicon valley titan promoting the destruction of creativity. "The Google commercial where the dad has his daughter use AI to construct a note to her favorite athlete rather than encourage her to write what she actually wants to tell her hero takes a little chunk out of my soul every time I see it," one X user comments. 

From Adobe's terms of service debacle to the Dungeons and Dragons disaster, we've seen plenty of AI controversies over the last few months – Google is simply the latest tech giant to fall off the tightrope of reputational management when it comes to the tech. But as a small UK cinema recently proved, it is possible to come out of an AI crisis unscathed.