Expand / Here’s an idea: Don’t be lazy and do it yourself!
If you followed any Olympic coverage this week, you probably saw a “Dear Sydney” ad for Google’s Gemini AI, in which a proud father asks for help writing a letter on behalf of his daughter, an aspiring runner and huge fan of world-record-holding hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
“I’m good with words, but this has to be perfect,” the father says, asking Gemini to “help me write a letter telling Sydney how much of an inspiration she is to him…” Gemini dutifully responds with a draft of a letter in which LLM tells Runner on his daughter’s behalf, “I want to be just like you.”
Every time I see this ad, it makes me nervous in ways that are hard to put into words (though Gemini itself has some helpful ideas). As someone who writes for a living, the idea of outsourcing writing tasks to machines raises career anxiety for me. And the idea of someone who is “good at writing” doubting their abilities when their writing “has to be perfect” sounds a warning against framing AI capabilities as superhuman.
But I think what’s most jarring about this ad is what it suggests about the types of human jobs Google thinks AI will replace: rather than using the LLM to automate boring chores and difficult research questions, “Dear Sydney” presents a world where Gemini can lighten the load by sharing heartwarming moments of connection with kids.
“Dear Sydney” advertisement.
This is the heartbreaking answer to a question that remains very common in the AI field: “What are we actually going to use these things for?”
Yes, I can help you
Marketers have a tough job selling the latest AI tools to the general public. An effective ad for an LLM must make it seem like a superhuman, do-it-all machine, but also like a friendly, approachable helper. It needs to show that the LLM is good enough to reliably do things you can’t (or don’t want to) do yourself, but it doesn’t need to show that it’s good enough to replace you completely.
Microsoft’s Copilot ad for the 2024 Super Bowl is a great example of how to tackle this conundrum, featuring several examples of people chasing their dreams in the face of glaring doubt: “Can you help me?” dreamers ask Copilot with a variety of prompts. Whether it’s a storyboard image, an impromptu organic chemistry quiz, or “code for a 3D open world game,” Microsoft’s response is, “Yes, we can help you.”
Microsoft’s Copilot marketing pitches it as a helper to make your dreams come true.
The “Dear Sydney” ad technically tries to fit into this same box. Its prompt begins, “Help your daughter…” and its final tagline is, “A little help from Gemini.” If you look closely toward the end, Gemini’s response also begins, “Here’s a draft to get you started.” And to be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with using a law graduate as a writing assistant in this way, especially if you have a disability or are writing in a language other than your native language.
But the subtle shift from Microsoft’s “Help Me” to Google’s “Help My Daughter” changes the tone of things. Inserting Gemini into a child’s heartfelt request for help from a parent makes the parent in question look like they’re just pushing the responsibility onto the computer in the coldest, most sterile way possible. Not only that, but it also looks like an attempt to avoid an opportunity to bond with their child over a shared interest in a creative way.
It’s one thing to ask an AI to help you with the most tedious parts of your job, as people are doing in a recent ad for Salesforce’s Einstein AI, but it’s another to ask your daughter to ask a computer to help her pour out her heart to her idol.
