Google Pulls Gemini Ad

Google's decision to pull its Gemini ad offers lessons for how students might interact with LLMs. The big question is, Does the girl need help?

In the ad, which is still on YouTube but no longer runs during the Olympic games, a father asks Gemini (formerly Bard) to help his daughter write an appreciation letter to U.S. hurdler and sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

Professor of Advanced Media Shelly Palmer's blog post explains the many issues with the Gemini ad. The post itself is an argument students can analyze. To me, his most influential point is the overstatement of LLMs' ability to convey human thoughts and feelings—and a lack of confidence in a young girl's ability to express herself without the help of technology. As Palmer says, "Give me a heartfelt message over a grammatically correct, AI generated message any day."

In response to controversy, a Google representative said, “We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, but can never replace it. Our goal was to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA,” and “While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation.” We don’t hear a lot of regret, apology, or learning from this response. I wonder how the disconnect happened between the ad testing and public response. That is one lesson Google could take away from the incident.