Apple iPad ad triggers AI fears

I find it hard to believe that no one on Apple’s marketing team saw this coming. Maybe they were too timid to speak up. Perhaps they were overruled. Maybe they didn’t care.

But surely someone in that Cupertino spaceship in California could comprehend the grim imagery of its new iPad ad – titled simply “Crush!” – in which a giant crushing machine slowly squeezes a pile of beloved creative tools. First, a trumpet, buckling. Then paint splattering everywhere. A bust, squashed. 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 on Tuesday. But many saw something different, and backlash is picking up steam.

“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 X. “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[ed] out of existence.”

It is Apple’s worst marketing faux pas since it forced everyone to listen to U2. It speaks to our broad fears that recent drastic advancements in technology are a grave risk to the joy, authenticity and spontaneity of human creativity.

For decades, Apple’s advertising has played on optimism around technology. Its famous Orwell-inspired ad “1984”, directed by Ridley Scott, placed Apple as the saviour of individualism against conformity – and we believed it. (Or at least, the people alive when it ran did. Sorry.)

Later, consumers were treated to the excellent iPod advertising, with those distinctive white headphones dangling and a pumping soundtrack. It heralded a world where our treasured music was becoming easier to buy, listen to and take with us.

As Apple has matured, its advertising has become mundane. Soft hues and cheerful scenes display the core features of the iPhone et al in an informative, if uninspiring, manner.