Google has scrapped its Olympics advertisement for the AI chatbot Gemini from its TV rotation just one week after the controversial ad, “Dear Sydney,” first aired.
“While the ad tested well before airing, given the feedback, we have decided to phase the ad out of our Olympics rotation,” Google said in a statement to Fortune.
“Dear Sydney,” which is still available on YouTube, currently has over 320,000 views, though the comments section on its page has been turned off. In the video, a father helps his young daughter write a letter to her hero, Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, with the help of Gemini AI.
The ad prompted a wave of negative feedback on social media from viewers who found its theme disturbing. Many expressed disgust at the idea that a father would use AI to craft something as heartfelt as a personal letter from a child. Others saw it as evidence of companies pushing to off-load essential parts of the human experience—like creativity and family connection—to machines. Shelly Palmer, a media professor at Syracuse University, called it “one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve ever seen.”
Have you seen Google’s “Dear Sydney” Olympic ad featuring a father using Gemini AI to help his young daughter write a fan letter to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? It is one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve ever seen. To be clear, I love the idea of a young aspiring athlete… pic.twitter.com/FFohdVBbut
— Shelly Palmer (@shellypalmer) July 29, 2024
The commercial even got ripped on the opinion page of the Washington Post.
I hate the Gemini ‘Dear Sydney’ ad more with each passing moment https://t.co/3C8pb20nWB
— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) July 31, 2024
“We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, but can never replace it,” Google told Ad Age prior to scratching the ad. “Our goal was to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA. [The ad] aims to show how the Gemini app can provide a starting point, thought starter, or early draft for someone looking for ideas for their writing.”
Despite the feedback, “Dear Sydney” was actually performing quite well compared with other Olympic ads, according to data reported by Business Insider. The ad tracking company System1 told BI the commercial scored a 4.4 out of 5.9 on its ratings scale and said it “champions diversity and inclusion by highlighting women in sports, providing young girls with role models.”
The “Dear Sydney” debacle is the second controversy involving Google’s Gemini since it launched the product last December. In February, the company temporarily paused the chatbot’s image generation feature after complaints emerged that it was creating inaccurate and unrealistic depictions of the race of historical figures, including portraying people of color as Nazis or the U.S. Founding Fathers.
