‘The consumer shouldn’t be the guinea pig’: Ad industry cautions against hasty AI rollouts

The advertising industry is bracing for a brand safety crisis to erupt as ads are introduced into experimental AI products. 

Google immediately faced consumer backlash after rolling out AI-powered summarized responses at the top of some search queries to U.S. users in mid-May, following a year of testing. In the subsequent weeks, social media users posted dozens of examples of the product surfacing conspiracy theories and recommending dangerous acts.

The fallout prompted Google to block some results and implement “more than a dozen technical improvements to our systems,” head of Google search Liz Read said in a blog post last week.

Technology and advertising experts blame the hastiness with which AI products are launching for their predisposition for errors.

Google botched the launch of its Bard chatbot in February after it shared false information during its first demo. Weeks later, the company came under heat again after its Gemini image generator produced inaccurate depictions of historical figures.

Google pauses Gemini image generation following 'inaccuracies'

“This is yet another story of poor governance by Google, which is a recurring theme with them in recent years, unfortunately,” said Lou Paskalis, marketing consultant and chief strategy officer at Ad Fontes Media.

Errors within new products are to be expected, and consumers are largely forgiving of such missteps. Horizon Media’s most recent survey of U.S. social media users found usage of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok remained steady despite concerns about these platforms’ handling of data and hate speech.

Problematic responses from Google’s AI search product also appear to be relatively limited; in its blog post, Google referenced taking action on a “small number of cases” relative to the billions of queries it processes everyday.

“For something at the scale of Google search, for there to be dozens of examples is actually