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Misguided Apple Intelligence ads

132 points by mrzool 2y ago

vundercind 2y ago
Is it just critics and writers on the internet not taking these ads as jokes, or are normal people also reading them as serious? That seems to me the key question re: whether these are mistakes.
- smnrg 2y ago
  Those humans. When will they stop? (This should also be read as a joke.)
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  I'm certainly reading them as jokes. It's a classic 'someone is being mildly bad, but the amusement of everybody it works out anyway'.
  - ncr100 2y ago
    Buuuut which consumer wants to be a joke?
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
      You're not telling the consumer he'll be a joke. You're telling them that even if they were humorously villainous, they'd get away with it and everyone would be okay with it, since it worked out so well.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      No one. I'm thinking they're aiming to capitalize on mixed feelings people have about AI. These ads let the viewers have their social objects to diss AI - "haha, AI is for the losers like in that Apple ad", while at the same time making them say, in the privacy of their thoughts, "but I am not a loser and I could use such functions too!".
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I agree, and they also present AI as something accessible to regular people for their everyday minor situations. "Huh, if the office knucklehead can use this to write a professional sounding email, maybe that could help me make my decent emails even better."
- yunwal 2y ago
  They read very obviously as jokes, but still strike me as distasteful and tonedeaf. If they were in a satire of apple, they could be funny, but the idea of AI slop infecting even family gifts is just so, so dark and depressing it's hard to see why they thought it could sell phones.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  Idk as someone who doesnt really consume a lot of commercials, the most interesting thing here to me is that they are funny ads. I can't speak to the article's critique itself, but I think the choice here of going whimsical/funny is pretty telling of what all this AI stuff is ultimately going to resolve down to for the consumer/user. Nobody wants to be OpenAI anymore, all their profundity is lost on everyone except people on this particular website we are on. It just seems like going that route is starting to feel like not a great bet, I think, to the older, more mainstream companies in the space. They always see which way the wind is blowing, they can pay to.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  They're clearly meant to be humorous, and everyone gets that. However they are truly terrible ads. They paint Apple's features with a negative tone and are the sort of lazy, low-effort entrant that you expect from gambling or crypto sites. Just garbage ads. I know nothing about the ad business, but I feel like Apple must have engaged with an irregular agency for this. They're so out of character for the company.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    > They're clearly meant to be humorous, and everyone gets that. It is not at all clear to me that the most-upset of these critics are among “everyone”. “Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy?” This does not come off as a better-literate reading in context, either, I think.
    - llm_nerd 2y ago
      Everyone understands they trying really hard to be humorous. You're doing a classic "you must not get it" bit when people find an attempt at humour stupid if not distasteful. Yes, we all get it, yet they're still stupid and the sort of ad I expect from Microsoft back in the Windows Phone days. As another comment mentioned, they're tone deaf if not dystopian: If this is the best image Apple could contrive for their AI features....Jesus Christ. As to the perpetually lazy bit, the ads are literally predicated on making a "humorous" situation around a thoughtless self-involved sociopath and the office clown. Supremely out of character for Apple, and they gave their agency too much rope.
      - vundercind 2y ago
        > You're doing a classic "you must not get it" bit when people find an attempt at humour stupid if not distasteful I’m not, the couple links I’ve seen here, including this one, have been written as if the ads aren’t intended to be funny, and judge (and describe) them as if the ads are trying to straightforwardly communicate something, rather than being a particular common sort of humorous ad—and, perhaps, failing at what they’re trying to say and communicating the wrong thing, or being bad for other reasons, but that’s not how this piece comes across. I’m not wondering if everyone who doesn’t like them didn’t understand them, but whether the ones bothering to blog about it are misreading the ads? Has it just been the links I’ve happened to have followed on the topic here?
rty32 2y ago
> In the first ad, Apple Intelligence enables a goof-off who wastes time and annoys his colleagues to surprise his boss with an unexpectedly well-written email. It’s not clear that the boss is impressed; he just can’t believe the guy would have written a professional message. This feels... weird. If the ad was released early 2023, it would still be relevant. But hey, we are now at Nov 2024, exactly after two years after ChatGPT was released. Anyone who has been half paying attention to "AI" wouldn't be impressed any more with a formal, professionally written email from anybody. Saying that as someone whose performance review had evidence of being "enhanced" with ChatGPT but didn't find it surprising. Well, what's more weird is the setup itself. Do bosses expect to read this kind of super formal email from their direct reports? Do people actually write first versions of emails like that? Something is off here. At least I don't think it ever occurred to me that I need to "rewrite an email to my boss using a professional tone" to my direct boss.
- paxys 2y ago
  Back when ChatGPT first released there was a common meme of people writing up a list of bullet points and converting them into a formal, verbose email via AI, and the receiver then using AI to summarize that email back down to a list of bullet points. I imagine a ton of current use of LLMs is something of this sort.
  - grahamj 2y ago
    It’s like the inverse of compression for transmission
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    It would be cool if the system were integrated enough to just send the list along with it. Then the AI on the receiving could fake summarizing it by just revealing the original list.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Funny as it is, it also hits close to home. Some people[0], at least in some cases[1], may really think in lists (or trees); many (most?) others prefer prose. Turning those structured thoughts into expected prose can sometimes be very time-consuming. I'm not ashamed to admit that, more than once, I used AI tools to turn a bullet-point-list-shaped brain dump into a first draft of an e-mail. I never sent it out without an almost complete rewrite, though - the point was just to get through the mental block caused by forced thinking mode switch. -- [0] - I suspect software devs more than company average, but I have no hard evidence for that, could be just my bias. [1] - Myself, often, when my mind is busy processing something else. In those situations, I write even more verbosely than my verbose usual.
mrandish 2y ago
> Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy? This attitude seems aligned with Apple's general assumption (and apparent preference) that iOS users remain passive media consumers.
- userbinator 2y ago
  That's also the desire of the majority of companies, not just Apple.
- bitwize 2y ago
  We need to can this "passive media consumption" nonsense with respect to Apple. Do you know any musicians? Pretty much all of them use Apple gear inasmuch as they work digitally, even iPhones and iPads. Android's JVM bullshit makes it a "passive media consumption" platform, but iOS and iPadOS have real-time features that let them respond to input events with very low latency, perfect for creative work like music and visual art. Accordingly, the best creativity apps for mobile platforms work ONLY on iOS and iPadOS.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    > Do you know any musicians? Yes > Pretty much all of them use Apple gear inasmuch as they work digitally, even iPhones and iPads. There's a big difference between one musician I know who uses their iPhone to watch YouTube videos to improve their guitar-playing technique - to another that uses their iPhone only to capture samples because their DAW setup couldn't possible fit on a screen that small. None of the musicians I know (games-industry folk, mostly) uses an iPad as a DAW because it's a massive usability downgrade from a desktop (e.g. plug-ins support in Logic-Pro-for-iPad is lacking; or simply quickly dragging-and-dropping files around directly from the filesystem; and the inability to use shared projects from a company LAN). (I'll admit I have zero exposure to this area, so please correct me if I'm overstating these issues). --------- > We need to can this "passive media consumption" nonsense with respect to Apple I remember when Apple added Stickers to iMessages - and was appalled that they had decided that normal users should not have the ability to make their own stickers (unlike every other chat program out there). I think Apple's attitude towards their users is very much a valid criticism.
lsy 2y ago
By using humor, I think Apple is attempting to avoid previous failures in the advertising space where consumers recoiled from the unsavoriness of using an AI to replace a genuinely important interaction. In that sense it's kind of a clever way of alluding to consumers' potential use cases without taking on the commitment of standing behind those use cases, and leaving consumers ethically on the hook for their decisions to use these tools interpersonally. On the other side though, it definitely portrays the AI user as a sort of slacker, which is an interesting way to advertise a tentpole feature.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  To me it feels like the intended subtext there is "this stuff is meant to make your life easier sometimes, but we don't think it will revolutionize the world", which seems way more bearable to me than how a lot of companies are trying to push "AI" stuff.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Agreed. Apple is dancing around the topic of labor replacment with a deft chuckle by starring the buffoon. Granted, some of these tack too far towards stupid to be relatable, but I get why they picked this approach. My bottom of the barrel so far was the "Write me a training plan to run a marathon" commercial. Because obviously sitting down for 30 minutes, and not the multiple months of sticking to a training regimen, was the blocker there...
- lancesells 2y ago
  The first one is humorous, but the second is a little iffy (lying to your family). But the final shot of the mom is funny because she looks almost nefarious.
- from-nibly 2y ago
  Schrödinger's douchbag
- itsdrewmiller 2y ago
  > On the other side though, it definitely portrays the AI user as a sort of slacker I think this is called “meeting users where they are”.
Springtime 2y ago
> Why would Apple want to promote the idea that Apple Intelligence can bail you out from failing to pay attention to the most important people in your life? I mean, the forgotten birthday/event that's results in a scramble to get/do something is not an uncommon concept in ads, where some product sweeps into the rescue. I'd imagine it's almost a cliche because it's effective.
- tveita 2y ago
  It doesn't work here because there's a mismatch between the format and the intended message. She forgot his birthday but scrambles and buys him a 7-eleven hot dog - funny, self-aware. 7-Eleven doesn't actually believe the hot dog is a very good birthday gift. She forgot his birthday but scrambles and buys him a Rolex - materialist, not for everyone but will appeal to some. Not very funny. She forgot his birthday but scrambles and buys him a cheap fake Rolex - not that funny, just an ad for counterfeits? Does Apple think that having an AI slap together some images without your involvement is a thoughtful birthday gift? Then why show it so clearly as insincere and low-effort? Or do they think it's a bad gift? Then what are they trying to say about their product? We assume they want to be perceived as a premium brand. The ad could have just played it straight. Like, couple sits in couch, "Remember when we were at Ibiza?" "Let's relive those moments" (types "Ibiza vacation" into phone) (music swells as couple looks at phone screen with fake smiles) But that would be tacky. Funny at their expense. So they add a twist, make it so they are in on the joke. But now the messaging isn't coherent. Is the product good? bad? premium? cheap?
  - fred_is_fred 2y ago
    The ad is so terrible that at this point I will assume it's a setup for the 3rd-8th ads where Apple Intelligence helps with the divorce by translating angry texts and manages the custody agreement along with helping to locate divorce lawyers.
orev 2y ago
These ads remind me of the ones (not from Apple) that were being shown when car infotainment systems started coming out. Cue the guy driving a carpool full of work colleagues who receives a text from his wife, which the car then reads aloud to everyone (I don’t remember it exactly, but this was the gist of it). Yeah, it makes a funny ad, but it also highlighted everyone’s exact reason why they don’t really want this type of thing. In the AI cases, it’s about incompetent people being able to appear competent, while the people really putting in the effort are just suckers to be fooled.
plagiarist 2y ago
I have felt the exact same about these ads ever since seeing them. I have no idea how these were approved by the company. They couldn't think of any other uses for these tools than forgetful slackers compensating? It's a depressing glimpse into the future.
- ncr100 2y ago
  I speculate that the ads were created long before Apple AI was delayed to the following year, in 2023. And culture hadn't realized how big a negative side such a cool tech has, then. Generously.
baggy_trough 2y ago
A bigger problem is that, so far, Apple Intelligence is truly awful. It's like they tried to put Siri into more places without making it any smarter than it was 10 years ago.
loughnane 2y ago
I don’t like it but Apple—like other firms— aims at making money of the masses. The truth is there are a ton of folks like this. As long as there’s an ad campaign that gives them permission to offload a human experience to a tech company they’ll feel ok doing it. That’s gross but it makes people more and more reliant on apple’s latest feature and so keeps them locked in their ecosystem. I see why Apple does it. People who know better look down on this but there’s lots of folks with money who don’t know better.
- sottol 2y ago
  I figure expectations/behaviors will shift once this becomes the new norm. That 5-second birthday present or shallow prospectus summary will become obvious pretty soon after a wide uptake and nullify any advantage.
  - loughnane 2y ago
    Novelty is a hell of a thing. There’ll be something equally as hollow coming up next.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Pretty sure the birthday thing already is obvious. Has been for some 3+ years now - for at least as long as my Samsung Galaxy phone keeps generating this kind of stuff out of random photos in my gallery, on its own, every couple days. Google Photos has effectively been doing the same thing for much longer, too. I mean, all those auto-composed photo slideshows universally suck; you've seen a couple (per vendor), you've seen them all. Easiest way to tell - music. Second easiest way - goofy title, some photos don't match the purported theme. As for the prospectus video - that I suspect would fly, and will fly for many years to come, because whether it works depends entirely on how well this guy can sell it. Being able to talk off skimming the summary of the Cliff's Notes of a book, without the teacher realizing you didn't read the actual thing, is a skill people tend to master in high school.
    - recursivecaveat 2y ago
ethbr1 2y ago
>> Where’s the positive ad with [...] a businessperson using it to understand a complex report dumped on them minutes before a meeting? There is literally exactly that ad. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BK8bnkcT0Ng https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BK8bnkcT0Ng Imho, it's one of the best "Why AI?" ads I've seen so far.
- Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  Kind of. The guy in this ad is portrayed as a slacker who didn't read the report everyone was expected to read. He presumably received the report well in advance of the meeting, he just didn't bother to look at it. This is very different from someone who was given a report he/she could not possibly have read in time! This guy is the person who uses Sparknotes instead of doing his homework. I'm all for efficiency, but if a summary could fully capture the report, the author wouldn't have written the report, they'd just have written the summary. Of course, maybe in this brave new world we're living in, the report's author did just write a summary, then used AI to turn it into a multi-page document, which readers used AI to turn back into a summary. Is this what we want?
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > He presumably received the report well in advance of the meeting... Where'd you get that from? That everyone else had read it / lied about reading it?
    - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
      Yeah, the alternative is that everyone else lied and the boss has impossible expectations of his team. That's absolutely possible but not my default assumption.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        Realistic alternative: life happens. By my experience, most of other people in that room probably only skimmed the prospectus, but even if they all read it carefully, maybe this one guy had a really busy couple days. Deadlines at work, kids getting sick, etc. With a dozen people in a room, sheer probability demands that every now and then, someone will be unprepared through no fault of their own. In this ad, it happens to be that guy. In other words: beware of fundamental attribution error.
grahamj 2y ago
I mostly echo thoughts already posted here but I’ll just add: Both of these only really work during this brief moment in time where a lot of people still are not familiar with the capabilities of AI. If either of the recipients were, they would be insulted Or at least see right through the senders’ intentions. These won’t age well.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  And if the ads do age well, I probably won't. Not with historic new low-points in basic human integrity. Next up: A tool to help absentee parents trick their lonely children, pretending that they observed the school play and were impressed with their child's contribution.
  - lancesells 2y ago
    I think something similar was in the Apple Keynote but it wasn't as nefarious. Basically, your worklife is hell so you forgot your kids play but magic AI cures it by letting you know that it's coming up? I forget exactly what it was but it seems like something a calendar reminder could have solved. I think all these consumer facing AI tools seem to not address the root of all the problems that connected technology has brought on. It's like being allergic to dairy but instead of abstaining, you just take a lactaid pill and keep eating pizza.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      In a way that analogy undersells it, because part of the problem comes from deceiving and hurting others.
    - _carbyau_ 2y ago
      As someone who is lactose intolerant, with a kid with dairy allergy your last sentence is more apt than probably intended. Dairy allergy is different to lactose intolerance and not helped by lactaid at all... So I read your last sentence as: "It's like seeing the problem but instead of taking the time to understand and resolve it, you just take some vague voodoo-like mitigation action and keep going through the motions." Which to me, sums up most people's approach to using AI. Maybe VoodooAI would be a good brand, it's about as far as most people understand it...
caycep 2y ago
i miss the aspiration/inspiration apple ads a few years back. I don't like the snarky tone of whoever's running the current campaigns. I assume it depends on who's running the creative direction of that dept but still...
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  If it's not clear, Apple has lost its mojo from the time Steve Jobs has gone. The vision pro showed us that.
- shombaboor 2y ago
  even the old ipod ads were about how much you could enjoy music with dancing and stuff. this batch of ads are just shortcuts in life, that really, you shouldn't be making in the first place.
- fragmede 2y ago
  that one that smushed everything from the past info an iPad wasn't well recieved either
- rchaud 2y ago
  The ads simply reflect the contemporary state of tech's moral bankruptcy. Apple of old wouldn't have sanctioned ads showcasing such a half-baked use case.
m463 2y ago
It could be that humans didn't create these ads, but because of the training data they are controversial and garner much attention, like this article. :)
tylerchilds 2y ago
> Imagine you work at Apple’s ad agency. What ads would you like to see showcasing Apple Intelligence features? Nice try, Apple Intelligence.
iamwpj 2y ago
Remember -- the lazy, bad at your job, etc. assumptions are attributes you are putting on the characters in the ads. At no point in the world of the ad are these indicated by any of the other participants. Side character emotions are typically limited to confusion, interest, admiration, disbelief, and the ilk. Ultimately in each of the examples the participants are left holding what they "wanted", be it a sentimental birthday wish or a business correspondence that is "up to snuff".
- rchaud 2y ago
  > Remember -- the lazy, bad at your job, etc. assumptions are attributes you are putting on the characters in the ads. Somehow, I don't think this has escaped the ad agency that made these.
- self_awareness 2y ago
  Yes, they get what they wanted, without the effort. Respect without the effort of earning it is worthless. Love without any effort is a lie. These ads just tell us that you can have something that requires effort, without the effort part. The second ads even ends with the look that says "I will do it this way from now on".
- aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
  > Remember -- the lazy, bad at your job, etc. assumptions are attributes you are putting on the characters in the ads. At no point in the world of the ad are these indicated by any of the other participants. This argument is completely dishonest, despite your sanctimonious tone. The premise of the ads is that the person intentionally misleads others by hiding the fact they're using Apple Intelligence. Apple is celebrating a culture where you lie to family and coworkers over trivial things, which is why these ads are so contemptible. If the office worker in the commercial had said "I didn't read that paper, let me ask Apple Intelligence" then I'm guessing his coworkers would correctly think he was lazy and bad at his job, and would probably take a closer look at his work if they knew an AI was doing it. Instead he lied and his coworkers bought it, allowing him to corrupt his company with AI slop. These ads are just totally indefensible.
PeterStuer 2y ago
The author's surprise, I would even dare to say bafflement, about the ads choices are hinged on a believe in a form meritocracy. People facing concequences for their deliberate (in)actions. Hence helping the dyslexic is valourous while the lazy or inattentive less so. If however your ethics are based on equality of outcome, then that distiction does not hold. You do not see any problem with the lazy or incompetent getting the same result as anybody else. In fact, you would regard any other outcome as unethical. From the latter beleive system, these Apple ads make perfect sense.
- qnleigh 2y ago
  Helping people be more productive with less effort, I'm all for it. But letting people fake the appearance of effort or sincerity by passing off AI-generated content as their own? Nope nope nope.
swiftcoder 2y ago
The second one really floors me, because my iPhone already (a) flag birthdays of close friends/families, and (b) produces memories videos of events, all without "Apple Intelligence". Is their tent-pole feature really just "we made Photos' existing features slightly more general"?
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Same here. I've said it elsewhere, my Samsung Galaxy has been doing such videos automatically, out of random photos in my gallery (grouped via one of couple built-in semantic categories), every couple days, for 3+ years now. Such collages are obvious to spot, too. There's only a limited selection of music, which you quickly memorize, some photos don't really match the generated title, the mood is off, etc. This ad would've made sense 5 years ago, not today.
- fred_is_fred 2y ago
  That second ad is beyond embarrassing both for the lazy-ass wife character and Apple.
wuming2 2y ago
Apple Learning would have been not only aligned with reality but also averaged expectations and marketing materials. Learning may have led to some Intelligence. In due time.
qnleigh 2y ago
The ad that bothers me most is actually the one where the guy just reads an AI-generated summary of a document at a meeting without having looked at the original. This is an amazing usecase for AI and I'm excited for it to get to that point, but it still just makes s** up way too often to be used blindly like this. These ad will probably succeed and normalizing doing this kind of thing, which means more noise.
self_awareness 2y ago
The first one is not that bad, although it shows perfectly what is the intended target audience for this function. However the second one... I don't want to enter the reality where this happens. Despicable.

132 points by mrzool 2y ago

Is it just critics and writers on the internet not taking these ads as jokes, or are normal people also reading them as serious? That seems to me the key question re: whether these are mistakes.

smnrg 2y ago
Those humans. When will they stop? (This should also be read as a joke.)
impossiblefork 2y ago
I'm certainly reading them as jokes. It's a classic 'someone is being mildly bad, but the amusement of everybody it works out anyway'.
- ncr100 2y ago
  Buuuut which consumer wants to be a joke?
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    You're not telling the consumer he'll be a joke. You're telling them that even if they were humorously villainous, they'd get away with it and everyone would be okay with it, since it worked out so well.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    No one. I'm thinking they're aiming to capitalize on mixed feelings people have about AI. These ads let the viewers have their social objects to diss AI - "haha, AI is for the losers like in that Apple ad", while at the same time making them say, in the privacy of their thoughts, "but I am not a loser and I could use such functions too!".
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I agree, and they also present AI as something accessible to regular people for their everyday minor situations. "Huh, if the office knucklehead can use this to write a professional sounding email, maybe that could help me make my decent emails even better."
yunwal 2y ago
They read very obviously as jokes, but still strike me as distasteful and tonedeaf. If they were in a satire of apple, they could be funny, but the idea of AI slop infecting even family gifts is just so, so dark and depressing it's hard to see why they thought it could sell phones.
beepbooptheory 2y ago
Idk as someone who doesnt really consume a lot of commercials, the most interesting thing here to me is that they are funny ads. I can't speak to the article's critique itself, but I think the choice here of going whimsical/funny is pretty telling of what all this AI stuff is ultimately going to resolve down to for the consumer/user. Nobody wants to be OpenAI anymore, all their profundity is lost on everyone except people on this particular website we are on. It just seems like going that route is starting to feel like not a great bet, I think, to the older, more mainstream companies in the space. They always see which way the wind is blowing, they can pay to.
llm_nerd 2y ago
They're clearly meant to be humorous, and everyone gets that. However they are truly terrible ads. They paint Apple's features with a negative tone and are the sort of lazy, low-effort entrant that you expect from gambling or crypto sites. Just garbage ads. I know nothing about the ad business, but I feel like Apple must have engaged with an irregular agency for this. They're so out of character for the company.
- vundercind 2y ago
  > They're clearly meant to be humorous, and everyone gets that. It is not at all clear to me that the most-upset of these critics are among “everyone”. “Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy?” This does not come off as a better-literate reading in context, either, I think.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    Everyone understands they trying really hard to be humorous. You're doing a classic "you must not get it" bit when people find an attempt at humour stupid if not distasteful. Yes, we all get it, yet they're still stupid and the sort of ad I expect from Microsoft back in the Windows Phone days. As another comment mentioned, they're tone deaf if not dystopian: If this is the best image Apple could contrive for their AI features....Jesus Christ. As to the perpetually lazy bit, the ads are literally predicated on making a "humorous" situation around a thoughtless self-involved sociopath and the office clown. Supremely out of character for Apple, and they gave their agency too much rope.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      > You're doing a classic "you must not get it" bit when people find an attempt at humour stupid if not distasteful I’m not, the couple links I’ve seen here, including this one, have been written as if the ads aren’t intended to be funny, and judge (and describe) them as if the ads are trying to straightforwardly communicate something, rather than being a particular common sort of humorous ad—and, perhaps, failing at what they’re trying to say and communicating the wrong thing, or being bad for other reasons, but that’s not how this piece comes across. I’m not wondering if everyone who doesn’t like them didn’t understand them, but whether the ones bothering to blog about it are misreading the ads? Has it just been the links I’ve happened to have followed on the topic here?

rty32 2y ago

> In the first ad, Apple Intelligence enables a goof-off who wastes time and annoys his colleagues to surprise his boss with an unexpectedly well-written email. It’s not clear that the boss is impressed; he just can’t believe the guy would have written a professional message. This feels... weird. If the ad was released early 2023, it would still be relevant. But hey, we are now at Nov 2024, exactly after two years after ChatGPT was released. Anyone who has been half paying attention to "AI" wouldn't be impressed any more with a formal, professionally written email from anybody. Saying that as someone whose performance review had evidence of being "enhanced" with ChatGPT but didn't find it surprising. Well, what's more weird is the setup itself. Do bosses expect to read this kind of super formal email from their direct reports? Do people actually write first versions of emails like that? Something is off here. At least I don't think it ever occurred to me that I need to "rewrite an email to my boss using a professional tone" to my direct boss.

paxys 2y ago
Back when ChatGPT first released there was a common meme of people writing up a list of bullet points and converting them into a formal, verbose email via AI, and the receiver then using AI to summarize that email back down to a list of bullet points. I imagine a ton of current use of LLMs is something of this sort.
- grahamj 2y ago
  It’s like the inverse of compression for transmission
- bee_rider 2y ago
  It would be cool if the system were integrated enough to just send the list along with it. Then the AI on the receiving could fake summarizing it by just revealing the original list.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Funny as it is, it also hits close to home. Some people[0], at least in some cases[1], may really think in lists (or trees); many (most?) others prefer prose. Turning those structured thoughts into expected prose can sometimes be very time-consuming. I'm not ashamed to admit that, more than once, I used AI tools to turn a bullet-point-list-shaped brain dump into a first draft of an e-mail. I never sent it out without an almost complete rewrite, though - the point was just to get through the mental block caused by forced thinking mode switch. -- [0] - I suspect software devs more than company average, but I have no hard evidence for that, could be just my bias. [1] - Myself, often, when my mind is busy processing something else. In those situations, I write even more verbosely than my verbose usual.

mrandish 2y ago

> Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy? This attitude seems aligned with Apple's general assumption (and apparent preference) that iOS users remain passive media consumers.

userbinator 2y ago
That's also the desire of the majority of companies, not just Apple.
bitwize 2y ago
We need to can this "passive media consumption" nonsense with respect to Apple. Do you know any musicians? Pretty much all of them use Apple gear inasmuch as they work digitally, even iPhones and iPads. Android's JVM bullshit makes it a "passive media consumption" platform, but iOS and iPadOS have real-time features that let them respond to input events with very low latency, perfect for creative work like music and visual art. Accordingly, the best creativity apps for mobile platforms work ONLY on iOS and iPadOS.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  > Do you know any musicians? Yes > Pretty much all of them use Apple gear inasmuch as they work digitally, even iPhones and iPads. There's a big difference between one musician I know who uses their iPhone to watch YouTube videos to improve their guitar-playing technique - to another that uses their iPhone only to capture samples because their DAW setup couldn't possible fit on a screen that small. None of the musicians I know (games-industry folk, mostly) uses an iPad as a DAW because it's a massive usability downgrade from a desktop (e.g. plug-ins support in Logic-Pro-for-iPad is lacking; or simply quickly dragging-and-dropping files around directly from the filesystem; and the inability to use shared projects from a company LAN). (I'll admit I have zero exposure to this area, so please correct me if I'm overstating these issues). --------- > We need to can this "passive media consumption" nonsense with respect to Apple I remember when Apple added Stickers to iMessages - and was appalled that they had decided that normal users should not have the ability to make their own stickers (unlike every other chat program out there). I think Apple's attitude towards their users is very much a valid criticism.

lsy 2y ago

By using humor, I think Apple is attempting to avoid previous failures in the advertising space where consumers recoiled from the unsavoriness of using an AI to replace a genuinely important interaction. In that sense it's kind of a clever way of alluding to consumers' potential use cases without taking on the commitment of standing behind those use cases, and leaving consumers ethically on the hook for their decisions to use these tools interpersonally. On the other side though, it definitely portrays the AI user as a sort of slacker, which is an interesting way to advertise a tentpole feature.

crooked-v 2y ago
To me it feels like the intended subtext there is "this stuff is meant to make your life easier sometimes, but we don't think it will revolutionize the world", which seems way more bearable to me than how a lot of companies are trying to push "AI" stuff.
ethbr1 2y ago
Agreed. Apple is dancing around the topic of labor replacment with a deft chuckle by starring the buffoon. Granted, some of these tack too far towards stupid to be relatable, but I get why they picked this approach. My bottom of the barrel so far was the "Write me a training plan to run a marathon" commercial. Because obviously sitting down for 30 minutes, and not the multiple months of sticking to a training regimen, was the blocker there...
lancesells 2y ago
The first one is humorous, but the second is a little iffy (lying to your family). But the final shot of the mom is funny because she looks almost nefarious.
from-nibly 2y ago
Schrödinger's douchbag
itsdrewmiller 2y ago
> On the other side though, it definitely portrays the AI user as a sort of slacker I think this is called “meeting users where they are”.

Springtime 2y ago

> Why would Apple want to promote the idea that Apple Intelligence can bail you out from failing to pay attention to the most important people in your life? I mean, the forgotten birthday/event that's results in a scramble to get/do something is not an uncommon concept in ads, where some product sweeps into the rescue. I'd imagine it's almost a cliche because it's effective.

tveita 2y ago
It doesn't work here because there's a mismatch between the format and the intended message. She forgot his birthday but scrambles and buys him a 7-eleven hot dog - funny, self-aware. 7-Eleven doesn't actually believe the hot dog is a very good birthday gift. She forgot his birthday but scrambles and buys him a Rolex - materialist, not for everyone but will appeal to some. Not very funny. She forgot his birthday but scrambles and buys him a cheap fake Rolex - not that funny, just an ad for counterfeits? Does Apple think that having an AI slap together some images without your involvement is a thoughtful birthday gift? Then why show it so clearly as insincere and low-effort? Or do they think it's a bad gift? Then what are they trying to say about their product? We assume they want to be perceived as a premium brand. The ad could have just played it straight. Like, couple sits in couch, "Remember when we were at Ibiza?" "Let's relive those moments" (types "Ibiza vacation" into phone) (music swells as couple looks at phone screen with fake smiles) But that would be tacky. Funny at their expense. So they add a twist, make it so they are in on the joke. But now the messaging isn't coherent. Is the product good? bad? premium? cheap?
- fred_is_fred 2y ago
  The ad is so terrible that at this point I will assume it's a setup for the 3rd-8th ads where Apple Intelligence helps with the divorce by translating angry texts and manages the custody agreement along with helping to locate divorce lawyers.

orev 2y ago

These ads remind me of the ones (not from Apple) that were being shown when car infotainment systems started coming out. Cue the guy driving a carpool full of work colleagues who receives a text from his wife, which the car then reads aloud to everyone (I don’t remember it exactly, but this was the gist of it). Yeah, it makes a funny ad, but it also highlighted everyone’s exact reason why they don’t really want this type of thing. In the AI cases, it’s about incompetent people being able to appear competent, while the people really putting in the effort are just suckers to be fooled.

plagiarist 2y ago

I have felt the exact same about these ads ever since seeing them. I have no idea how these were approved by the company. They couldn't think of any other uses for these tools than forgetful slackers compensating? It's a depressing glimpse into the future.

ncr100 2y ago
I speculate that the ads were created long before Apple AI was delayed to the following year, in 2023. And culture hadn't realized how big a negative side such a cool tech has, then. Generously.

baggy_trough 2y ago

A bigger problem is that, so far, Apple Intelligence is truly awful. It's like they tried to put Siri into more places without making it any smarter than it was 10 years ago.

loughnane 2y ago

I don’t like it but Apple—like other firms— aims at making money of the masses. The truth is there are a ton of folks like this. As long as there’s an ad campaign that gives them permission to offload a human experience to a tech company they’ll feel ok doing it. That’s gross but it makes people more and more reliant on apple’s latest feature and so keeps them locked in their ecosystem. I see why Apple does it. People who know better look down on this but there’s lots of folks with money who don’t know better.

sottol 2y ago
I figure expectations/behaviors will shift once this becomes the new norm. That 5-second birthday present or shallow prospectus summary will become obvious pretty soon after a wide uptake and nullify any advantage.
- loughnane 2y ago
  Novelty is a hell of a thing. There’ll be something equally as hollow coming up next.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Pretty sure the birthday thing already is obvious. Has been for some 3+ years now - for at least as long as my Samsung Galaxy phone keeps generating this kind of stuff out of random photos in my gallery, on its own, every couple days. Google Photos has effectively been doing the same thing for much longer, too. I mean, all those auto-composed photo slideshows universally suck; you've seen a couple (per vendor), you've seen them all. Easiest way to tell - music. Second easiest way - goofy title, some photos don't match the purported theme. As for the prospectus video - that I suspect would fly, and will fly for many years to come, because whether it works depends entirely on how well this guy can sell it. Being able to talk off skimming the summary of the Cliff's Notes of a book, without the teacher realizing you didn't read the actual thing, is a skill people tend to master in high school.
  - recursivecaveat 2y ago

ethbr1 2y ago

>> Where’s the positive ad with [...] a businessperson using it to understand a complex report dumped on them minutes before a meeting? There is literally exactly that ad. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BK8bnkcT0Ng https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BK8bnkcT0Ng Imho, it's one of the best "Why AI?" ads I've seen so far.

Wowfunhappy 2y ago
Kind of. The guy in this ad is portrayed as a slacker who didn't read the report everyone was expected to read. He presumably received the report well in advance of the meeting, he just didn't bother to look at it. This is very different from someone who was given a report he/she could not possibly have read in time! This guy is the person who uses Sparknotes instead of doing his homework. I'm all for efficiency, but if a summary could fully capture the report, the author wouldn't have written the report, they'd just have written the summary. Of course, maybe in this brave new world we're living in, the report's author did just write a summary, then used AI to turn it into a multi-page document, which readers used AI to turn back into a summary. Is this what we want?
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > He presumably received the report well in advance of the meeting... Where'd you get that from? That everyone else had read it / lied about reading it?
  - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
    Yeah, the alternative is that everyone else lied and the boss has impossible expectations of his team. That's absolutely possible but not my default assumption.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Realistic alternative: life happens. By my experience, most of other people in that room probably only skimmed the prospectus, but even if they all read it carefully, maybe this one guy had a really busy couple days. Deadlines at work, kids getting sick, etc. With a dozen people in a room, sheer probability demands that every now and then, someone will be unprepared through no fault of their own. In this ad, it happens to be that guy. In other words: beware of fundamental attribution error.

grahamj 2y ago

I mostly echo thoughts already posted here but I’ll just add: Both of these only really work during this brief moment in time where a lot of people still are not familiar with the capabilities of AI. If either of the recipients were, they would be insulted Or at least see right through the senders’ intentions. These won’t age well.

Terr_ 2y ago
And if the ads do age well, I probably won't. Not with historic new low-points in basic human integrity. Next up: A tool to help absentee parents trick their lonely children, pretending that they observed the school play and were impressed with their child's contribution.
- lancesells 2y ago
  I think something similar was in the Apple Keynote but it wasn't as nefarious. Basically, your worklife is hell so you forgot your kids play but magic AI cures it by letting you know that it's coming up? I forget exactly what it was but it seems like something a calendar reminder could have solved. I think all these consumer facing AI tools seem to not address the root of all the problems that connected technology has brought on. It's like being allergic to dairy but instead of abstaining, you just take a lactaid pill and keep eating pizza.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    In a way that analogy undersells it, because part of the problem comes from deceiving and hurting others.
  - _carbyau_ 2y ago
    As someone who is lactose intolerant, with a kid with dairy allergy your last sentence is more apt than probably intended. Dairy allergy is different to lactose intolerance and not helped by lactaid at all... So I read your last sentence as: "It's like seeing the problem but instead of taking the time to understand and resolve it, you just take some vague voodoo-like mitigation action and keep going through the motions." Which to me, sums up most people's approach to using AI. Maybe VoodooAI would be a good brand, it's about as far as most people understand it...

caycep 2y ago

i miss the aspiration/inspiration apple ads a few years back. I don't like the snarky tone of whoever's running the current campaigns. I assume it depends on who's running the creative direction of that dept but still...

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
If it's not clear, Apple has lost its mojo from the time Steve Jobs has gone. The vision pro showed us that.
shombaboor 2y ago
even the old ipod ads were about how much you could enjoy music with dancing and stuff. this batch of ads are just shortcuts in life, that really, you shouldn't be making in the first place.
fragmede 2y ago
that one that smushed everything from the past info an iPad wasn't well recieved either
rchaud 2y ago
The ads simply reflect the contemporary state of tech's moral bankruptcy. Apple of old wouldn't have sanctioned ads showcasing such a half-baked use case.

m463 2y ago

It could be that humans didn't create these ads, but because of the training data they are controversial and garner much attention, like this article. :)

tylerchilds 2y ago

> Imagine you work at Apple’s ad agency. What ads would you like to see showcasing Apple Intelligence features? Nice try, Apple Intelligence.

iamwpj 2y ago

Remember -- the lazy, bad at your job, etc. assumptions are attributes you are putting on the characters in the ads. At no point in the world of the ad are these indicated by any of the other participants. Side character emotions are typically limited to confusion, interest, admiration, disbelief, and the ilk. Ultimately in each of the examples the participants are left holding what they "wanted", be it a sentimental birthday wish or a business correspondence that is "up to snuff".

rchaud 2y ago
> Remember -- the lazy, bad at your job, etc. assumptions are attributes you are putting on the characters in the ads. Somehow, I don't think this has escaped the ad agency that made these.
self_awareness 2y ago
Yes, they get what they wanted, without the effort. Respect without the effort of earning it is worthless. Love without any effort is a lie. These ads just tell us that you can have something that requires effort, without the effort part. The second ads even ends with the look that says "I will do it this way from now on".
aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
> Remember -- the lazy, bad at your job, etc. assumptions are attributes you are putting on the characters in the ads. At no point in the world of the ad are these indicated by any of the other participants. This argument is completely dishonest, despite your sanctimonious tone. The premise of the ads is that the person intentionally misleads others by hiding the fact they're using Apple Intelligence. Apple is celebrating a culture where you lie to family and coworkers over trivial things, which is why these ads are so contemptible. If the office worker in the commercial had said "I didn't read that paper, let me ask Apple Intelligence" then I'm guessing his coworkers would correctly think he was lazy and bad at his job, and would probably take a closer look at his work if they knew an AI was doing it. Instead he lied and his coworkers bought it, allowing him to corrupt his company with AI slop. These ads are just totally indefensible.

PeterStuer 2y ago

The author's surprise, I would even dare to say bafflement, about the ads choices are hinged on a believe in a form meritocracy. People facing concequences for their deliberate (in)actions. Hence helping the dyslexic is valourous while the lazy or inattentive less so. If however your ethics are based on equality of outcome, then that distiction does not hold. You do not see any problem with the lazy or incompetent getting the same result as anybody else. In fact, you would regard any other outcome as unethical. From the latter beleive system, these Apple ads make perfect sense.

qnleigh 2y ago
Helping people be more productive with less effort, I'm all for it. But letting people fake the appearance of effort or sincerity by passing off AI-generated content as their own? Nope nope nope.

swiftcoder 2y ago

The second one really floors me, because my iPhone already (a) flag birthdays of close friends/families, and (b) produces memories videos of events, all without "Apple Intelligence". Is their tent-pole feature really just "we made Photos' existing features slightly more general"?

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Same here. I've said it elsewhere, my Samsung Galaxy has been doing such videos automatically, out of random photos in my gallery (grouped via one of couple built-in semantic categories), every couple days, for 3+ years now. Such collages are obvious to spot, too. There's only a limited selection of music, which you quickly memorize, some photos don't really match the generated title, the mood is off, etc. This ad would've made sense 5 years ago, not today.
fred_is_fred 2y ago
That second ad is beyond embarrassing both for the lazy-ass wife character and Apple.

wuming2 2y ago

Apple Learning would have been not only aligned with reality but also averaged expectations and marketing materials. Learning may have led to some Intelligence. In due time.

qnleigh 2y ago

The ad that bothers me most is actually the one where the guy just reads an AI-generated summary of a document at a meeting without having looked at the original. This is an amazing usecase for AI and I'm excited for it to get to that point, but it still just makes s** up way too often to be used blindly like this. These ad will probably succeed and normalizing doing this kind of thing, which means more noise.

self_awareness 2y ago

The first one is not that bad, although it shows perfectly what is the intended target audience for this function. However the second one... I don't want to enter the reality where this happens. Despicable.