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Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, asks a new commercial from Google: What if the founding fathers had access to Google Workspace?
With the tagline “A group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely unseen intermediate draft of Thomas Jefferson when he receives a teasing text from Ben Franklin, triggering a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, the meeting is scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with each guest seemingly turning off their camera?), and then the whole thing is finalized with electronic signatures; Cue the fireworks.
Of course, since this is an announcement from a technology company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictional founders use Google’s “Help Me Visualize” AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes about the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before denying a request to access King George III’s document.
It’s all very cynical (at one point, Sam Adams asks: “Can we settle this with beer?”), and AI evangelism is relatively conservative when compared to Many other recent announcementsincluded A famous Google commercial Where a father uses Gemini to write a loving letter to his daughter. Perhaps the most advanced AI element of the commercial is the footage itself, which to my eye has the eerie glow of AI-generated video.
While viewers comments on YouTube and Instagram It seems to be mostly positive, and the response on Bluesky has been (not surprisingly). Much more important. Posters described the ad as “disturbing” and “astonishingly tone-deaf”, and the AI angle was the biggest target – even as many users, Including historian Angus Johnston“Surprisingly little of this is actually artificial intelligence,” he noted.
“Even in a well-worn fictional joke, it is impossible to prove that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human cooperation,” Johnston said.
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