\n
<\/p>\n
It was a bad week for AI\u2019s public image. The concept was booed on mention at several commencement speeches, tarnished<\/a> a literary prize, drove more layoffs, and tangled local politics in a number of data-center squabbles. A hyped new book about AI\u2019s impact on \u201ctruth\u201d was dragged for including fake quotes<\/a> made up by AI. Pope Leo XIV\u2019s forthcoming encyclical will concern \u201csafeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,\u201d Vatican News<\/em> reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen something intensify this quickly,\u201d mused<\/a> one of the researchers behind a recent poll from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, finding less than half of Americans think the country should charge ahead with AI innovation.<\/p>\n Inevitably, this backlash-y skepticism threatens to ding big brands that, fairly or not, seem complicit in AI\u2019s increasing ubiquity. This isn\u2019t just a potential problem for the leading AI companies themselves (which haven\u2019t been doing a great job of making a case for the technology\u2019s upsides). The risk is now wider, potentially touching any brand seen using AI in dubious ways. In fact, this week also brought a small but telling example that hints at what the emerging AI-skeptical zeitgeist might portend.<\/p>\n In a fairly innocuous post on X touting its association with Italian tennis champion Jannik Sinner, Nike wrote that the tennis superstar \u201ccan do it all,\u201d adding, \u201cThis isn’t just history \u2014 it’s his story in the making.\u201d Referring to the \u201cit isn\u2019t y, it\u2019s z\u201d construction, a trope of AI writing, an X user groused<\/a>: \u201cthey let a GPT AI-ism through on the main Nike page?? I thought marketing teams caught this stuff by now.\u201d This was just conjecture, and not all that convincing (writers have been using this construction long before AI), but it sparked hundreds of responses.<\/p>\n