Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach’s PSA meekly counters utopian AI promises

By: Eric Thomas

Whether you are watching the Super Bowl on TV, scrolling make-up tutorials on Instagram or listening to a technology podcast, you are being fed advertising for artificial intelligence.

The commercials are everywhere. And they promise the world.

Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the companies that build AI have deployed advertising to recruit us as loyal users of their astronomically expensive software. Persuade us now, and perhaps we will be loyal customers later.

Meanwhile, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach — with some help from a nebulous technology group — has sounded an alarm about AI this week, releasing a PSA.

“The reports are very troubling,” he says about threats posed by artificial intelligence.

Over the next few years, our culture will decide whether we are AI skeptics or fanatics. For that reason, the language that is used to sell AI — or steer us away from it — matters. Let’s listen to what is being said about the technology that could define the 21st century.

From Silicon Valley

In their ads, technology companies describe AI as a wonderland: productivity at work, inspired hobbies at home and wellness nirvana at the gym. The word choices would make a spiritual guru proud.

In marketing AI app-building software, Base 44 urges us: “Consider yourself limitless.” It’s also described as “the next thing you can’t live without.” The company uses the language of religious cults swirled with rampant consumerism. “Elite” plans start at $160 per month.

Besides AI, what product from the past 50 years could have generated all of these promises in one commercial? In 78 seconds of advertising, Perplexity offers:

“Get your time back.”

“Access to knowledge is easier than ever.”

“Discover something new every day.”

“Knowledge on-demand anytime anywhere. For anything you wanna know.”

There’s no modesty — just hyperbole.

Judging by their advertising, tech companies agree on AI’s greatest virtue: efficiency.

The YouTube description for a Copilot AI ad claims that “Microsoft 365 Copilot isn’t just a better way of doing the same things. It’s an entirely new way of working.” Press play on the video and watch a layered flurry of chatbot prompts, all written simultaneously and feverishly, including: “Want to get a jump start on your day?” The message envisions AI as hyperactive multichannel problem solving.

Other AI advertising promises are more direct. ChatGPT’s advertisement, “What Codex unlocks,” features a technology CEO who boasts about what AI made possible. You don’t need to understand his jargon to understand the promised efficiency.

“We were able to create a JavaScript runtime in just two weeks,” says Syrus Akbary Nieto. “Without Codex, it would have taken us easily one year.”

For people outside Silicon Valley, ChatGPT’s advertising shows tangible AI efficiencies, such as opening a new restaurant.

“I found the perfect spot,” someone types into the chatbot. “Help me write the business plan.”

In another ad, ChatGPT is the elixir for fixing the family car: “Dad said the truck is ours if we fix it. Help us get it running.”

The pitches implicitly promise success when you combine your ambition with AI’s wisdom — never mind the skills required to cook spaghetti bolognese or handle a wrench.

Elsewhere, two of Google’s recent AI commercials blend family values with problem solving. One commercial considers how to reassure a young boy about moving to a new house.

The ad’s answer: Open the Gemini chatbot and ask it to visualize his new bedroom, complete with the family dog’s bed. The commercial closes with words carrying a double meaning: “It will be whatever we want it to be,” the boy’s mom says. Both the house and the Gemini chatbot, the script suggests, can be family dreams.

Another Gemini ad suggests a solution for a lost plush toy. Again, the commercial ends with double meaning, as a parent says, “She’s going to love this.” The Gemini app? Or the solution for the lost toy? Perhaps both.

Also focused on family, the ChatGPT advertisement “Generations of Farming” implicitly promises to save a South Carolina family seed farm. The father-daughter story at the center of the commercial goes big on emotion. Will a daughter be able to keep the farm alive with the help of AI once her father is gone? The rosy outlook is the product of machine learning smooshed together with the Hallmark Channel.

Sensing the absurdity and humor of these promises, AI company Anthropic made a series of commercials that act as a counterpoint to the torrent of maudlin, overpromising ads. (Last month Anthropic distinguished itself from the AI crowd in another way: by standing up to the Pentagon.)

Anthropic’s YouTube commercials promise that its Claude chatbot won’t contain advertising while answering prompts. In one commercial, we watch a young man ask for advice, “How do I communicate better with my mom?” I braced for sentimentality.

Instead, a woman, personifying a chatbot, responds with bland advice. She continues with an invitation to a dating site where young men can meet mature women. I flinched. The camera pushes in on her face as she suggestively describes connecting “sensitive cubs” with “roaring cougars.”

By lampooning rival AI companies for their in-app advertising and bloated guarantees, Anthropic lands a 1-2 punch combo on the competition.

From the Kansas attorney general

Standing in front of this fire hydrant of AI advertising is Kobach with a dripping garden hose.

On Tuesday, the Digital Citizens Alliance posted “New PSA: Protecting Kansas Families from the Risks of AI Chatbots,” featuring the Kansas attorney general.

“Artificial intelligence or AI is now part of our everyday life,” Kobach says. “While it can be helpful, certain AI applications like chat bots pose real risks, especially to our most valuable assets, our children.”

(Cue the needle scratch across the record player: Children are “our most valuable assets”? May I never refer to my children as assets.)

The video continues by listing the threat — unfortunately quite real — of teens becoming so emotional rattled and manipulated by chatbots that they die by suicide. Kobach testified in support of a bill in February that mirrors these technology concerns.

As Kobach continues, stock video footage floats across the screen. Kobach warns that digital characters “that teens talk to online can form emotional connections with young people and shape their thinking. Sadly, with tragic outcomes.”

The YouTube page for the Digital Citizens Alliance suggests that other Republican attorneys general will soon agree with Kobach and release their own PSAs.

Why? The organization appears to be a factory for conservative attorneys generals and their political messaging.

Before Tuesday, the most current videos on the organization’s feed were two years old. A collection of 20 videos about online safety used the same graphics, the same script and the same YouTube description. Each featured a Republican attorney general.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.