Google Wins the Gold Medal for Worst Olympic Ad
The company suggests using AI to write a child’s fan letter. Why?
Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.
Google is running a new commercial during the Olympics. It’s about a cute little girl—she’s a runner, and she loves Team USA’s Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, a world-record-holding track star who won two Olympic gold medals in 2021. The little girl wants to write her a letter. So Dad fires up an AI chatbot.
“Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone how inspiring she is,” he asks Google’s Gemini. He instructs it to add a line about how his daughter plans to break McLaughlin-Levrone’s world record one day (and to be sure to include the phrase sorry, not sorry.) The ad never shows the final letter in full, just pans over snippets of it. The whole thing is supposed to be endearing, demonstrating to viewers how AI can help forge human connection and facilitate creativity.
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Become a SubscriberBut come on: Nothing about this ad makes sense.
Isn’t what makes a letter like this cute the fact that it is written by a child? Shouldn’t a young person get to explore their feelings and then authentically relay them? And what about McLaughlin-Levrone? Will she be able to tell that the letter was written by AI? How would she feel about that? Would she send back her own AI-composed message, thanking the child for taking the time to write to her?
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