Appearance and reality in AI ads

I watched all the AI ads so you don’t have to. What I discovered says more about tech companies than it does about their customers.

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I’m becoming more persuaded by the idea that generative AI isn’t as revolutionary as the tech evangelists would have us believe. And it’s not because I’m keeping a close eye on Nvidia stock or because I possess some secret knowledge about GPT NIMBUS2000. I don’t even think it’s because I’m coping that these things won’t steal my job.

Reader, it’s because I’ve been watching the ads.

I know I’m not the first to notice just how many ad slots during the Super Bowl were devoted to AI proselytizing, including a $14 million OpenAI ad that equated the tech to the invention of fire yet notably wasn’t created using AI. Then there was the GoDaddy ad featuring “White Lotus” actor Walton Goggins explaining how building a website with AI is sort of like acting. And who could forget — okay, pretty much everyone could forget — the Salesforce ad where Matthew McConaughey sits alone in a downpour while his friends hang out at a nice restaurant across the street because … without an AI agent he’s incapable of asking a staff member to seat him inside?

Of these three ads, the GoDaddy one alone suggests a compelling use-case for AI, even if it doesn’t elaborate on the details. The OpenAI ad is just vibes, and the Salesforce ad presents a situation that frankly earns the label “preposterous.”

Another subgenre of AI ad — and there’s some overlap here — relies on characters who are unrealistically dumb to make the AI services they use look smarter. Freddie DeBoer wrote about this in January, skewering an especially baffling Apple Intelligence ad in which our hero, a comedically dimwitted man named Warren, changes the tone of an email he sends to his boss so it sounds more professional.

In DeBoer’s words:

Everything about the advertisement is designed for you to understand that the fundamental appeal of having “AI” on your iPhone - and you could do this just as easily in the web browser, but never mind - is so that you, a deeply unintelligent being, can operate as a minimally-competent human. They’re selling this thing to people who look at Warren and say, yeah, that’s me, to the absolute dullards.

In essence, the assumption seems to be that you, the viewer, identify with incompetence, that you take no pride in your work, and that there’s nothing wrong with that so long as you can appear smart to those above you in the office org chart.

Which brings me to the third and perhaps most interesting category: “Appearance > Reality.”

Take the GoDaddy ad I mentioned earlier. It’s notable that the protagonist advocates not for learning a skill or process, but looking like you know what you’re doing. Or the Google Gemini ad where a man at an art gallery asks AI not to teach him something about Renoir, but to give him “something smart to say about Renoir.” Or the Apple Intelligence ad where Bella Ramsey uses her phone to look up the name of a guest at an event, then plays it off like she remembered all along, leaving the man feeling heart-warmed by what he believes was a genuine recollection.

The message? It doesn’t matter what you do. Only how you’re seen.

This category takes a more unsettling turn with Google’s “Dear Sydney,” where a father uses Gemini to generate a letter to an Olympic athlete on behalf of his daughter. And, finally, the crème de la crap, an Apple ad where a mom one-ups her kids’ thoughtful birthday gifts to their dad with an AI-compiled video she generates on her phone in two seconds, smiling smugly after successfully sucking up all the attention in the room.

What viewers are meant to take away from these ads is clear. It’s the destination; not the journey. Faking it is making it.

But is it really?

I wonder: How will the art gallery visitor who used AI to give him “something smart to say about Renoir” respond when his interlocutor quibbles with his point (which, let’s be honest, may contain errors)? Will he ask to be excused so he can sit on the toilet and frantically ask AI what to say next? How will Walton Goggins’ small business fare when at some point in its development he’s expected to actually know what he’s doing, not just look like he does?

I’m no tech expert, but I am someone who remembers the “I am rubber and you are glue” maxim popular among first graders, and that alone makes me suspect that what these companies are saying about us in these ads really describes them: obsessed with speed and efficiency at any cost, contemptuous of knowledge, anxiously fixated on the opinions of others, willing to engage in deception as long as it makes them look good. It’s this last item that implies to me that the AI hypemen may be hyping too close to the sun — that maybe these products and services aren’t so game-changing after all.

But regardless of whether gen-AI is hot air or hot shit, it’s undeniable that the companies trying to foist it on us have immense influence over how we live and work, meaning if we’re not careful we may get the AI-saturated future they portend — and whatever costs come with it.

A better way

I don’t know about you, but I want to live in a world where the small business owner does know what he’s doing, the child track star writes the letter imperfectly and learns something in the process, the Renoir novice doesn’t feel the need to use artist factoids to prove himself to people he probably doesn’t even like, and the mom tempted to outshine her kids’ birthday gifts … seeks therapy.

In this world, people would treat daily activities, new experiences, and the people around them with care. And sure, what the hell, maybe they would use AI in certain circumstances (I’m not saying there are NO good use-cases), but only insofar as it aligns with their deeply considered values and goals.

In a Substack essay on contemplation,

Nicholas Carr

writes, “The paying of attention — to a painting, to a lecture, to an essay, to a person, to anything — is also always a paying of courtesy. In paying attention we pay respect.”

Contemplation as Rebellion

This hints at what is perhaps my deepest frustration with the way the tech giants are advertising these products, and why so much AI discourse bothers me in a way that I can’t seem to shake off. The enthusiasts, with their “move fast and break things” ethos, too often encourage disrespecting ourselves and one another by eschewing the attention needed to engage with the world beyond a surface level.

“Move slow and make things” may not be the most energizing rallying cry, but it just might be exactly what we need to carve out a pro-human niche in an uncertain future.

Thank you for reading Art Life Balance.

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