This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. Joe Wilkins, writing for Futurism: Though the abomination of an ad only has 20,000 views on YouTube, backlash in the comments was so intense that McDonald’s shut down comments over the weekend, before delisting the video entirely. (Some marketing research databases managed to scrape the clip, if you’re curious.) more Not all embedded content is displayed here. You can view the original to see embedded videos and other embedded content.
I couldn’t agree more. But doesn’t the scene have the same response to AI generated music? I’m the first to point out how easily people are offended these days but I don’t feel the outrage to AI taking over everything is enough! Unless I’m missing something here…
Naively, I'm surprised how quickly major brands have been to adopt AI ads. Although I guess Coca Cola and McDonalds are so big it almost doesn't matter what they do at this point.
Are people soft or are you just not yet grasping how much AI has already and is about to fuck the economy/peoples lives?
Was it ironic to anyone else reading that guy's defense of this? The fact that he noted how many hours were spent on splicing together AI generated crap, when those hours could probably have been spent on just making something decent themselves? I don't know about y'all, but anytime I've attempted to use ChatGPT or Google's AI search stuff, it's never saved me any time, and half the time it's just been downright wrong or contradictory.
It's actually shocking to me that someone in marketing saw that final product and thought "this looks great. Push it out!"
I for one am sick of the black and white takes on AI. It has pros and cons for cryin out loud. No it shouldn’t be used in certain cases but anyone that thinks it’s all bad is so out of touch and probably the first to go when the AI overlords take over.
Please enlighten us on how creative fields getting raped by tech bros that want to control the world is a good thing...
It’s built on theft, has apocalyptic environmental implications, and will destroy countless livelihoods. So, yeah, it is actually “all bad.”
Artists losing work is a tragedy. There was a channel on YouTube with these amazing jazz covers of popular songs. As soon as I found out it was AI (after a couple videos in) I was immediately turned off. But there is no doubt a market for this. I’m more referring to AI in general. We can’t be entirely doom and gloom about all of this. It’s got incredible potential for things like medical breakthroughs and I, personally, am investing a lot of hope in that. It’s exciting to see such an incredible development in real time. And yes, it may kill us in order to make more paper clips.
i think it's important to clarify that many people are opposed to generative AI specifically, which i think is quite distinct from the type you might use in a medical context AI being used as a branding tool for lots of unrelated technologies is muddying this debate even further annoyingly
My hot take is that, if anyone in big tech actually gave a shit about the positive possibilities of AI (achieving medical breakthroughs, or finding ways to solve environmental crises) then they wouldn't have made GenAI available to every idiot with internet access. Instead, they just turned on the tap with zero foresight or care for the implications. And so now, you have a huge number of people using AI for dumb, trivial purposes, or using it to cheat in school, or using it to make bad uncanny valley art, and all those uses are driving massive energy usage and pollution in ways that are actively moving in the opposite direction from the few benefits AI could have for our society at large if it was used responsibly. But yeah, let's try to tout "medical breakthroughs" to the people in Memphis who can't breathe the air in their hometown anymore because of data center pollution, or let's try to tout potential environmental breakthroughs when data centers are consuming huge quantities of fresh water, a limited resource we need to exist on this planet. TLDR: You can proclaim the "incredible potential" of AI all you want, but IMO there is zero argument that it isn't a net negative for our planet and the people living on it.
You would be surprised often marketing is overridden by executives who have no idea. It happens to me constantly.
Pushing back against soulless corporate slop ... not what I'd call soft. Defending soulless corporate slop ... much more of the "soft" variety imo.
MarkM as he gets obliterated by an AI-initiated nuclear attack: "People are tooo soooooooffffftttttt!"