I asked Google Gemini to write that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone fan letter. It sucked.

If you’re watching the Olympics, you’ve probably seen this sad Google commercial about a father who wants his daughter to use the Google Gemini AI assistant to write a fan letter to her favorite athlete, hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

Here’s the commercial:

Let’s put it to the test

Ok, Google, let’s see what you’ve got. Here’s what Google came up with for a fan letter based on the description in the commercial. The italicized bit at the top is my prompt.

Hi. Could you help my daughter write a fan letter to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? My daughter is a nine-year-old girl who loves to run and admires Sydney. Be sure to mention that she plans to break Sydney’s record one day. “Sorry, not sorry.”

Dear Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone,

I’m [Daughter’s Name], and I’m a huge fan of yours! I’m nine years old and I live in Portland, Maine. I love to run just like you! You are so fast and strong, and I watch all your races.

I really look up to you as a role model. You inspire me to work hard and never give up on my dreams. I know it might sound crazy, but I plan to break one of your records someday. Sorry, not sorry!

Thank you for being such an amazing athlete. I hope to meet you someday!

Sincerely, [Daughter’s Name]

Everything is wrong here

Here are a few things wrong with this commercial.

It promotes the idea of telling an energetic young athlete to believe she is not creative enough to write her own letter, and she needs help drafting 50 words or so. What a terrible thing to tell a child.

It tells the world that the purpose of Google Gemini is to free you from the drudgery of expressing your emotions like a genuine human. Reprehensible. Don’t outsource your humanity.

Finally, it generates a lame fan letter. Get rid of the exclamation points and it’s completely generic. It effectively reveals Gemini doing what it does worst, which is simulating human emotion. Why would you do that in an (expensive) commercial?

An athlete like Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, in between training and getting Google endorsement deals, is supposed to be impressed with computer-generated fan mail? If I got a letter like this, I’d be perturbed, not impressed.

I bet she’d rather receive a note with a crayon drawing and misspellings on notebook paper. At least that would create an actual human connection.

To Google’s advertising team

I recognize that it’s hard to explain the value of a versatile, powerful, multi-functional tool like Gemini in a 30-second spot. You have to reduce all that power to a picture of somebody doing a useful task.

The commercial featuring the woman who asks her Android phone to summarize all her emails as she strolls into the office? That was excellent.

This one is just sad. Please pull it off the air and try again.