Oh good, we can all stop trying now...
Watching a movie on Prime yesterday was interrupted by an ad for Alexa AI. Generally, I try to steer clear of entertainment that is coupled with advertising, but I really wanted to watch this movie, and Amazon had the exclusive on it—so there you go.
The ad depicted hapless people, overwhelmed by everyday situations, turning to Alexa for help: the exhausted parent somehow still baffled by their toddler's sleeping habits, the incompetent, sweaty, middle-aged man struggling to assemble a basketball net in his driveway, the couch potatoes shocked when their TV falls off the wall, leaving a gaping hole - thank heavens that Alexa is here to talk you through it in a calm and friendly tone.
What struck me was the positioning. Though meant to be humorous and broadly relatable, what it depicts is an infantilized, helpless consumer base miraculously rescued by an all-knowing AI supporting them in journey to overcome these laughable hurdles. It was painful to watch frankly—and it made me wonder: do ads that diminish us so readily actually still work?
This isn't new of course. Look at ads from a few decades ago portraying women confused and overwhelmed by the prospect of operating a car or planning dinner—only to be saved by a product before their husbands discovered their ineptitude. Or the ads of the '80s, where domestic disaster like spilled milk (which seemed to happen constantly) was solved with unbridled joy thanks to a new spray cleaner with a special nozzle or a brand of paper towel so absorbent it could suck up a small lake. Do we still need to sell like this? Are we forever compelled to fabricate pain in the minds of consumers for our products to solve?
Normalizing incompetence, ignorance, laziness, and ineptitude to sell AI is chilling in my view. That’s how it strikes me. How and where AI is used, and for what benefit, will (I’m sure) be sorted out in the coming years. Personally, I overwhelmingly support the position that AI should help people perform at an even higher level—rather than giving us a license to stop thinking, stop trying, and do more shopping.
