Anthropic is understood for its inventive advertising, however the AI firm could have been somewhat bit too inventive when it conjured up its most up-to-date commercial.
Titled “There’s hope in arduous questions,” the corporate’s newest advert has been unsettling viewers with its bizarre imagery and doomer-ist tone.
The advert begins with a video of a burning home (not precisely a heartwarming begin) earlier than pivoting to a collection of nonetheless photos. These photos embrace a crowd of individuals being surveilled by facial recognition, a homeless individual sleeping on the road, rows upon rows of tombstones in a cemetery, and what seems to be a gaggle of laborers toiling in a mine the place (presumably) uncooked supplies for smartphones are being dug up.
In the meantime, a voice-over observe options totally different folks asking questions like “Can AI be trusted?” and “Who’s gonna hit the brakes if we have to?”
Briefly: Not precisely the family-friendly crowd-pleaser of the yr. On the identical time, it’s additionally not notably far afield from the corporate’s previous messaging. Anthropic has constantly tried to depict itself as the moral foil to different AI firms. This newest advertising stunt — which leans into criticism of AI as a technique to make Anthropic appear conscious of (and subsequently distinctly worthy of) the accountability it carries — would seem like extra of the identical.
Not everyone is having it, nevertheless.
Sam Altman — the CEO of OpenAI, Anthropic’s chief rival — kicked off the criticism with some pithy trolling. “i assumed this was satire, stored in search of the deal with to be spelled c1audeai or one thing,” Altman posted to X on Monday.
Different skeptics — lots of whom appear to work within the tech business — got here out of the woodwork to comment upon Anthropic’s odd alternative of images and tone.
“Anthropic is kind of a tremendous firm. With the worst company communications ever,” another person said.
“[T]he EAs [effective altruists] at anthropic actually should be residing in a bubble of ai psychosis to assume this may go down effectively,” a crucial poster remarked.
As some have pointed out, Anthropic is following a really time-tested advertising playbook right here. That playbook entails a model calling out and proudly owning the harms brought on by its business as a technique to show that it’s the firm greatest positioned to keep away from or right these harms.
However even when it’s a well-known playbook, it appears to have backfired right here — notably the choice to incorporate a quick shot that seems to be from Arlington Nationwide Cemetery. “I can’t stress sufficient how fucked up it’s that Anthropic is operating an advert that features this picture asking ‘Who’s gonna hit the brakes if we have to?’” mentioned one commenter, sharing the cemetery picture that seems within the advert.
Folks stored coming again to the graveyard imagery. “Out of the whole lot in that advert, this half was exceptionally bizarre and sinister,” another person wrote, sharing the identical picture.
Personally, the advert vaguely jogs my memory of the propaganda sequence in “The Parallax View” — the Nineteen Seventies paranoid thriller about an evil company concerned in an MK-Extremely-esque conspiracy to create brainwashed assassins. That is in all probability not the most effective affiliation to have for a corporation that wish to show it’s performing as a drive for good on the earth.
Anthropic’s advertising has made a splash earlier than. In February, through the Tremendous Bowl, the corporate unleashed a slew of advertisements that humorously took intention at OpenAI’s determination to incorporate advertisements in ChatGPT. These advertisements earned it an excellent quantity of constructive buzz — in addition to the smoldering rage of its competitor.
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