Dear Google, who wants an AI-written fan letter?

The first time I saw Google’s latest commercial, I wondered, “Is it just me, or is this kind of bad?” By the fourth or fifth time I saw it, I’d stopped wondering.

It starts innocuously enough, with a father talking about how much his daughter loves Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (she “might even be the world’s number one Sydney fan”). Apparently, she wants to write the Olympic gold medalist a fan letter and needs her dad’s help — and that’s where things take a turn.

Yup, this is a commercial for Google’s Gemini AI, so the dad prompts Gemini: “Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is and be sure to mention that my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day. (She says sorry, not sorry.)”

Now, if you squint, you can see how this fits into the overall pitch for generative AI — it could be a writing coach or assistant, especially for someone who finds writing difficult or intimidating. And what could be more intimidating than writing a letter to your favorite athlete?

But it’s hard to think of anything that communicates heartfelt inspiration less than instructing an AI to tell someone how inspiring they are. Sure, Gemini is just generating a first draft that the father and his daughter will (hopefully?) personalize. But if this happened in reality, Sydney would just end up with a giant stack of nearly identical letters.

Novelist and Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast host Linda Holmes put it more emphatically, writing, “Obviously there are special circumstances and people who need help, but as a general ‘look how cool, she didn’t even have to write anything herself!’ story, it SUCKS. Who wants an AI-written fan letter??”

Plus, as Holmes noted, “A fan letter is a great way for a kid to learn to write! If you encourage kids to run to AI to spit out words because their writing isn’t great yet, how are they supposed to learn?”

I agree. Sadly, I will never be an Olympic athlete, but believe it or not, there are (extremely) rare occasions when even tech bloggers get complimentary messages. And I would much rather receive a brief, human-authored email that just says “YOU’RE GREAT!!” than an in-depth form letter that was written by AI.

None of this reaches the level of Apple smashing all of humanity’s achievements into an iPad, but it does suggest some challenges in pitching AI as something useful for normal people.