Google’s mistake is surprising and kind of profound, and unbelievably easy to fix: All they had to do was have the daughter be excited by a hurdler from another country. She could write a short fan letter, then Gemini could have translated it for them. Then show the hurdler reading the note and smiling. Instead of replacing connection, Gemini would now be enabling connection across boundaries that were previously insurmountable, showing how inspiration was international, and lots of other good things that we like ads to show us so that we can feel better about being human.
I mean, the real problem is that the entire history of human existence, from myth to romcoms, is filled with stories about people pretending to be other than they are and getting in trouble. The warnings are clear here, and the marketing department should heed them. Think about Cyrano de Bergerac. Cyrano is in love with Roxane, but convinced she could never love him due to his enormous honking nose, so he courts Roxane on behalf of his doofy friend Christian. You might remember it as a comedy but it’s very sad! Roxane ends up heartbroken in multiple ways. Christian is shot. Cyrano winds up dead.
This is the best articulation I saw about why the Friend.com product was so flawed: not only was it invading privacy, it was removing human connection.
Technology needs to enable connection, needs to make us more human, to be really valuable and transformative. Breaking down barriers instead of building new ones is the way to do that.