Google has pulled its controversial Olympics ad after critics blasted it for portraying what they called a bleak application of artificial intelligence.
The ad showed a father using Google’s Gemini AI chatbot to help his daughter write a fan letter to US Olympic track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. But many online questioned why Google would want to replace a child’s creativity with words written by a computer.
Google initially defended the ad, which ran during breaks from the Olympics, saying it showed how Gemini could provide a “starting point” for a piece of writing. But on Friday, the company reversed course.
“While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
The ad marked a striking miss for the tech giant, which has positioned Gemini as its answer to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT and is working to incorporate the AI technology throughout its suite of products, including Google Search and Gmail.
And it underscored a broader fear around artificial intelligence that the technology could take away jobs from people in creative fields, such as writers, musicians and visual artists.
Apple faced similar backlash earlier this year when it released an ad that showed symbols of human creativity — paint cans, musical instruments, a sculptural bust of a human head — being crushed by a giant hydraulic press and replaced by an iPad Pro, to the tune of Sonny & Cher’s “All I Ever Need Is You.” Apple quickly apologized for “missing the mark” with the advertisement.
