Google Pulls Controversial ‘Dear Sydney’ TV Spot in Which Dad Uses AI to Write Daughter’s Fan Letter

https://tvline.com/news/google-pulls-dear-sydney-tv-spot-gemini-ai-dad-daughter-fan-letter-1235311141/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1FOHphymYOyOxLHIPzzHDkWiF8-8vKvXWvwNqTQkuciPJalFT8gmfpiyI_aem_YQrPHtB8B9tAm-vcrNjW4Q

26 comments

  2. What’s the point of a thank you letter? To show human connection with someone who inspires you or pushed you to greater heights, making an impact on your life in some way. Would the athlete rather receive:

    1) AI written slop that takes two minutes to generate

    2) Handwritten letter with spelling errors, grammar errors, but genuine sentiment from a child and written in her own hand expressing her thoughts about what said athlete means to them

    Hmm, the world may never know.

  4. If I was an athlete, how shitty would it be to know your fan mail was just from some lazy dad using AI. I immediately told my husband this is such a sad commercial. What a waste of everyone’s time. Just have the girl write something in kid language.

  6. Just saw the ad for the first time and what a terrible concept to introduce your product with. Could have done something like “when we wanted to write a fan letter we knew how to ask for help” and then had the prompt be “we want to write a fan letter to Sydney, what do we need to include or something, and then have a jazzy page of facts and tips and have the little girl write from that.

    They must have put the concept for this as a prompt in Gemini cause it’s just not quite human.

  7. Good, that ad was so awful. Like, nobody wants to get fan mail written by AI. And if your kid is so inspired by somebody that they want to write to them, let them write the damn letter! It’s okay if it’s not perfect.

    The whole thing felt forced and disingenuous on many levels.

  9. It’s like when Mrs. Doubtfire said she made dinner for everyone but really she just ordered in

  10. Omg thank god. The second I saw this I was like “so you aren’t gunna teach your kid how to write her own letter tf?!?!” Dumbing down of our children is happening fast

  11. I want to know how it was made and approved by multiple teams of people without anybody recognizing how irrefutably awful it is.

  13. Lmao I laughed my ass off when I realized she was writing a thank you letter. Just defeats the purpose.

  14. This ad was playing nonstop, usually twice in one ad break. How did no one catch this before releasing it then? They’re more likely pausing the ad for a little bit. Everyone is so obsessed with AI, it’s insane. And yeah, I didn’t understand how this ad was supposed to be inspirational? Maybe people realized that giving kids access to AI is pretty lazy. 

  15. Teach your kid what it means to write a letter of admiration to another human…rather than someone/something else writing a form letter. WtF?

  16. “Hey Siri, write a deeply personal letter for me, from the heart. Make it all fancy and shit with no spelling errors. No, I don’t need to review it. Just send the heartfelt letter.”

  17. Thank goodness I’m not the only one who thought it was a stupid commercial!

  18. Not surprised. I saw this ad recently and immediately thought whoever came up with it should be fired. It was so fckin dumb lol…

  19. Good. This had my 3 year old running around the house going WHOS THAT GIRLLLLLLL and it’s been stuck in my whole family’s head for a week

  20. I was so mad when I saw this add. Like your daughter wants to try really hard to become something but let’s have ai write the letter to her idol? Let’s just kill the fun and excitement of being a kid and looking up to someone and trying to make a connection by taking the easy way out. I’m sure you will be a really successful track star with that mentality. I get their point but if you think about it for two seconds you realize it’s dumb.

  22. I thought I was the only one who found the ad off-putting.

  24. Who ever thought that this commercial was a good idea has probably been fired and banned from a career in advertising.

  25. I saw that ad just once. It made no sense to me, why not just have the kid write a letter?

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