Apple apologizes for tone-deaf advertising that crushed human creativity to create an iPad

Apple reportedly apologized for its “Crush!” ” deaf. advertising which triggered a furious reaction from artists, musicians and other creators. Adage reports that Apple said video “missed the mark” and abandoned plans to air the cutesy-turned-cranky ad on television.

It’s clear that Apple wanted the ad to serve as a metaphor for the myriad of creative tools one has when spending $1,000 or more on a new iPad Pro. Shown during Tuesday’s event, the video shows a series of musical instruments and other tools of human expression, including a guitar, drums, trumpet, amplifiers, record player, television and even more. “All I Ever Need Is You” by Sonny & Cher is the soundtrack to the music video.

Soon, it’s revealed that the objects are all sitting on top of an industrial crusher, which descends on the scattered creative instruments, exploding in satisfyingly colored plumes of smoke. But when the crusher comes back up, we see that everything has been transformed into a shiny new iPad Pro.

Ten years ago, this ad probably wouldn’t have been a big deal. But Apple’s marketers completely inhaled the context of the moment. The ad comes just weeks before Apple takes the stage at WWDC to announce its generative AI features that its investors have been salivating for.

Generative AI, as you may have heard, needs something to train on – and that means the work of humans. It learns from existing content to create algorithmically generated words, images, music, voices, or who knows what else. It also has the capacity to put those same creators — most of whom don’t have comfortable jobs at Apple or other big tech companies — out of work as businesses and consumers eagerly embrace robots meant to put unemployed creators.

Context is everything, and Apple has failed spectacularly. Its ad serves as a perfect metaphor for the potential of generative AI to crush human creation, turning us all into “quick artists” who type words into text boxes to replace their years of training and experience. (Certainly, generative AI also has some truly exciting applications, but there is still much to be done to address the chaos it can and will unleash on a societal level.)

“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to build products that empower creatives around the world,” said Tor Myhren, Apple’s vice president of marketing communications. Adage. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad ways people express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the point with this video and we are sorry.

Hey, an apology means something. But we’ll see what tone Apple takes next month when it rolls out the tools that set the stage for the apology in the first place. Something tells me the train has left the station and will move full steam ahead, regardless of the creativity written into the company’s DNA.