Google pulls Gemini AI ad after backlash from Olympics viewers

Google has confirmed that it had pulled an ad for its Gemini artificial intelligence after it landed flat with some Olympics viewers.

The "Dear Sydney" ad, intended to tout capabilities of Gemini AI, featured a dad warmly describing how the tool wrote his daughter a fan letter from her to US hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

However, some viewers bashed the ad as promoting the notion that parents should coax their children to rely on AI rather than learn to express themselves.

"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 told AFP.

Social media posts fired off on an array of platforms questioned whether the ad signaled a dystopian future in which human creativity atrophies due to AI.

Syracuse University media professor Shelly Palmer said the commercial suggested that a poorly worded prompt to a generative AI tool can express a person's feeling better than they could themselves.

"This commercial showing somebody having a child use AI to write a fan letter to her hero sucks," author Linda Holmes wrote in a post on BlueSky.

"Who wants an AI-written fan letter?"

Tech evangelists have touted the promised benefits of AI, but teachers, musicians, artists and others have accused its creators of training advanced computers to replace them.

Early this year, Apple had an ad stumble of its own with a commercial showing musical instruments, paint cans and other creative gear crushed and replaced by an iPad to the tune of a song titled "All I Ever Need Is You."