Google has withdrawn an Olympics advertisement for its AI chatbot, Gemini, following a backlash over its portrayal of a young girl using artificial intelligence to compose fan letters.
The ad featured a father using Gemini to help his daughter write to her favourite athlete, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Critics questioned Google’s message, suggesting it undermined the child’s creativity and authenticity.
The “Dear Sydney” commercial initially showed Gemini drafting a message of inspiration but closed with a clip of the girl running on a track, underlined by the slogan “A little help from Gemini.” Despite initially defending the advertisement as a creative aid, Google pulled it from the Olympics broadcast in response to the negative feedback, confirming the ad would still be available on YouTube.
In their revised statement, Google emphasized, “While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation.” They added, “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.”
The public reaction was sharply critical, with many expressing on social media that AI should not substitute personal touch in communications as sensitive as a child’s letter to a hero. One user noted, “Humans crave originality, especially in important emails and letters. Nobody wants them to be AI-generated because it implies the message was crafted without care, which defeats the purpose.”
Another lamented the lost opportunity for a child to express genuine admiration, “Dude, tell your kid to write from their heart; who wants a weird robonote from an 8-year-old?”
