You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
AI technologies

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
Let’s type “Generate pitch to get people to use AI” into an AI.

This commercial does a lot of things very well … and one big thing very wrong.

It does a fantastic job showcasing the various ways that AI (or, at least, the text/image generating software we’ve taking to calling AI) can be used. Shows how it can be used as a writing aide to polish up emails or brainstorm book titles, how it can look up information on everything from Renoir to workout routines, how it can answer random questions like “If a girl calls me a snack, how do I reply?”, and how it can be used to just goof around and generate images of cats playing guitar.

(Of course, we never see the AI answer any of the questions asked of it, and the filmmakers were very smart to do it that way. Any actual answers, no matter what they are, wouldn’t be satisfying to everyone. But by keeping the answers unseen/inaudible, viewers are invited to fill in for themselves what they AI says, which will suit their tastes the writers could’ve come up with. That’s a trick I like to call the “R2D2 Effect”.)

(Only AI response that’s actually shown are the pictures of cats playing guitar, ’cause, c’mon – how can you go wrong with a cat playing guitar?)

We see all sorts of people using the technology for all sorts of purposes, from the professional to the casual and everything in between. And with such a variety of uses, viewers are encouraged to imagine all sorts of new ways they might use AI they themselves, as encouraged by the “No Wrong Way to Prompt” slogan. It’s a great way to get folks who thought “I don’t need AI for anything” to start re-thinking things.

And with it all done to an upbeat and annoyingly catchy song, it’s just an all around great ad …

Except it never mentions what it’s advertising. This ad was supposed to be for Gemini from Google, but the words “Google” and “Gemini” are never said aloud – all they get is briefly appearing on the screen at the very end. Everyone in the ad just talks about “Doing AI” without any sort of brand specificity, without any incentive for picking Google’s product over any other AI programs out there.

For a piece of advertising, that’s a major fumble – like building a high-tech, top-of-the-line race car, but forgetting to put any wheels on it.

Although, maybe the thinking here was that these sorts of AI programs are so new, it’s less important to sell people on their specific product than it is to get them comfortable using AI programs in general, on the principle that a rising tide lifts all boats. It wouldn’t be the first time a tech company took this approach. Check out this Motorola ad from the 1980’s that barely mentions Motorola, and is mainly just trying to convince people that cell phones can actually be useful: