'Crush!': Apple’s iPad ad triggered our darkest fears of an AI takeover

livemint.com:

I find it hard to believe that no one on Apple Inc’s marketing team saw this coming. Maybe they were too timid to speak up. Perhaps they were overruled.

Surely someone [should have objected to] the grim imagery of the company’s latest iPad ad, Crush!, in which a giant crushing machine squeezes a pile of beloved creative tools. First, a trumpet, buckling. Then paint splattering everywhere.

An upright piano, crushed, strings and hammers flying out with a horrific crunch. Camera lenses shattering. The ad’s intended message was to suggest that all these wonderful tools could now be faithfully re-created using one of the new iPads announced last week.

But many saw something different, and a backlash [was in evidence online before Apple chose to apologise: “We missed the mark with this video and we’re sorry."] “Thank you to Apple for providing this excellent visualisation of how AI is made," I half-joked on Threads. Others had the same thought. “Just a terribly cruel image," one user wrote in response to chief executive officer Tim Cook’s post of the ad on Twitter.

“How embarrassing," wrote artist HappyToast. “Apple have mixed up their new iPad advert with one for their AI tools showing all human creativity being crush out of existence." It was Apple’s worst marketing faux pas since it forced everyone to listen to U2. The ad speaks to our broad fears that recent drastic advancements in technology are a grave risk to the joy, authenticity and spontaneity of human creativity.