\n<\/p>\n
Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks<\/a>: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?<\/p>\n With the tagline \u201cGroup project, but make it 1776,\u201d the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off?), then the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures; cue the fireworks.<\/p>\n Of course, since this is an ad from a tech company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google\u2019s \u201chelp me visualize\u201d AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before declining King George III\u2019s document access request.<\/p>\n The whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek (at one point, Sam Adams asks, \u201cCan we settle this over beers?\u201d), and the AI evangelism is relatively discreet when compared to many other recent ads<\/a>. And unlike that infamous Google commercial<\/a> in which a father uses Gemini to write a fan letter for his daughter, this one shies away from any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence would be improved with AI. Perhaps the most AI-forward element of the ad is the footage itself, which to my eye has the uncanny glow of AI-generated video.<\/p>\n While viewer comments on YouTube<\/a> and Instagram<\/a> appear to be mostly positive, you may not be surprised to learn that the response on Bluesky has been far more critical<\/a>. Posters declared the commercial \u201ccringey\u201d and \u201cstunningly tone deaf,\u201d and the AI angle was the biggest target \u2014 even as many users, including historian Angus Johnston<\/a>, noted that it\u2019s \u201camazing how little of this is actually AI.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEven in a corny fantasy joke, it\u2019s impossible to make the case that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human collaboration,\u201d Johnston said.<\/p>\n \n