If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you might have seen Google’s new ad pitching its generative AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. And if you have seen it, we’re curious: did you roll your eyes to the back of your skull when you first saw it, too? The commercial in question features a young girl who aspires to be like Team USA hurdling star and two-time Olympic gold medal winner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The girl’s father, who narrates the ad, wants to help his daughter write a fan letter to her favorite athlete, so he turns to Gemini to help him do it. “Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is,” the father prompts the bot, “and be sure to mention how my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day. (She says sorry, not sorry.)” Gemini then spits out the requested letter — which in the small portion that’s visible looks perfectly generic. But while we would hope that this father-daughter duo might then spruce up the AI-spun fan mail with some more personality, the intended message of the commercial — that generative AI is there to offer a helping hand to all, including tykes hoping to reach out to their favorite athlete — falls wildly, brutally flat. After all, this kid isn’t an executive trying to expedite penning a boring, bound-to-be-formulaic email. She’s a child who, instead of learning how to express herself through words on paper, is instead being taught to turn to a computer program…Google's Latest Pitch for AI Is So Sad It Sounds Like a Spoof