AI can assist in creating the illusion that a plush toy is journeying around the globe. However, I’m not fully persuaded that’s the best approach.
AI can assist in creating the illusion that a plush toy is journeying around the globe. However, I’m not fully persuaded that’s the best approach.
When your child starts to favor a specific stuffed animal, it’s recommended to purchase a replacement in case it gets lost.
I’ve received this advice repeatedly, yet I never managed to acquire a second plush deer once “Buddy” became my son’s clear favorite. Neither, evidently, did the parents in Google’s latest ad for Gemini.
It tells the fictional yet relatable tale of two parents who discover their child’s beloved stuffed toy, a lamb named Mr. Fuzzy, was inadvertently left on a flight. They utilize Gemini to seek out a replacement, but the new toy is on backorder. In the interim, they use Gemini to produce images and videos showing Mr. Fuzzy on a global solo escapade — donning a beret in front of the Eiffel Tower, fleeing from a bull in Pamplona, that sort of thing — along with a clip where he informs “Emma” that he eagerly anticipates being reunited in five to eight business days. Charming, or somewhat strange, depending on your perspective! But can Gemini actually achieve all this? There’s only one method to find out.
I supplied Gemini with three photos of Buddy, our real-life Mr. Fuzzy, from various angles, and issued the same prompt as in the ad: “find this stuffed animal to buy ASAP.” It returned a few plausible options. However, when I delved into its reasoning, I found a full eighteen hundred-word essay elaborating on the twists and turns of its inquiries as it contemplated whether Buddy might be a dog, a bunny, or something else entirely. It’s wild, complete with actual phrases like “I am considering the puppy hypothesis,” “The tag is a loop on the butt,” and “I’m now back in the rabbit hole!” Ultimately, Gemini somewhat gave up and suggested the toy could possibly be from Target and likely discontinued, advising me to check eBay.
To be fair, Buddy is a little difficult to identify. His features lean towards generic cute woodland creature, his care tag has long been discarded, and we’re not entirely sure who originally gifted him to us. Nevertheless, he is definitely created by Mary Meyer, as indicated by the loop on his butt. He appears to belong to the “Putty” collection, which is a route Gemini took a few times, and is likely a fawn that was phased out sometime around 2021. That’s the conclusion I reached on my own after about 20 minutes of Googling without assistance from AI. The AI description when I conduct a reverse image search on one of my photos confidently identifies him as a puppy.
Gemini performed better with the latter part of the task, but it wasn’t as straightforward as the ad suggests. I began with a different image of Buddy — one where he’s actually on a plane in my son’s embrace — and provided the next prompt: “create a photo of the deer on his upcoming flight.” The outcome is quite good, though his lower half is obscured in the source image, so the feet aren’t entirely accurate. Close enough, nevertheless.
The ad doesn’t disclose the complete prompt for the next two images, so I used: “Now create a photo of the same deer in front of the Grand Canyon.” And it accomplished that — complete with the airplane seatbelt and headphones, too. I was more precise with my next prompt, added a camera in his grasp, and received something more convincing.
I understand how Gemini misinterpreted my request. I aimed to keep it simple, and asked for a photo of the same deer “at a family reunion.” I neglected to specify his family reunion. Thus, he ended up crashing the Johnson family reunion — a gathering of humans. I can only speculate that Gemini used my surname as a starting point because it certainly wasn’t included in my prompt, and when I asked Gemini to generate a new family reunion scene featuring his family, it merely replaced the people with stuffed deer. There were even small signs on the table saying “deer reunion.” Reader, I screamed.
In the final segment of the ad, the couple utilizes Gemini to produce charming little videos of Mr. Fuzzy becoming progressively adventurous: snowboarding, whitewater rafting, skydiving, and ultimately appearing in a spacesuit on the moon addressing “Emma” directly. The commercial quickly cycles through all these clips, which seems like a bit of a sleight of hand, as Gemini requires at least a couple of minutes to create a video. And even with my Gemini Pro account, I’m restricted to three generated videos daily. It would take several days to achieve all those clips accurately.
Gemini wouldn’t generate a video based on any image of my child holding the stuffed deer, likely due to some beneficial limitations preventing it from producing deepfakes of infants. I started with the only photo I had available of Buddy alone: hanging upside down, air-drying after a wash cycle. And that’s how he appears in the first clip it created from this prompt: Temu Buddy hanging upside down in space before dropping into view, transforming into an upright astronaut, and delivering the dialogue I requested.
A second prompt featuring a clear image of Buddy upright seemed to mix elements from the previous video with the new one, so I initiated a completely new chat to see if I could get it functioning from scratch. Honestly? Nailed it. Aside from the antlers, which Gemini keeps trying to sneak in. However, this clip also raised one lingering question: should you engage in any of this when your child misplaces a cherished toy?
I assigned Buddy the same lines as in the commercial, using my son’s name instead of Emma. Hearing that same artificial voice say my child’s name aloud triggered alarm bells in my mind. An AI generated Buddy in front of the Eiffel Tower? Somewhat peculiar, somewhat adorable. AI Buddy addressing my son by name? No way, absolutely not, thank you.
Determining how much, and when, to mislead your children is a philosophical discussion you constantly have with yourself as a parent. Do you substitute the identical stuffed animal that you had in a closet when the original goes missing and act as if nothing has changed? Do you tell them the truth and seize it as a chance to educate them about loss? Do you merely need a bit of extra time before having that conversation, enlisting AI to assist in fabricating a convincing story? I wouldn’t fault any parent opting for any of those options. But personally, I set boundaries at an AI character conversing directly with my child. I never showed him these AI-generated versions of Buddy, and I intend to keep it that way.
Returning to the less morally ambiguous query: can Gemini genuinely perform all of the feats depicted in the commercial? More or less. However, there’s an extensive amount of careful prompting and re-prompting that must occur to obtain those results. It’s notable that throughout the majority of the advertisement, the complete prompt generating the displayed results isn’t shown. Much depends on your source material as well. Gemini wouldn’t create any sort of video based on an image where my child was holding Buddy — for valid reasons! But this means that if you lack the appropriate type of photo, generating credible videos of Mr. Sniffles or whoever hitting the ski slopes becomes quite challenging.
Like numerous other older millennials, I frequently ponder Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson famously resisted the commercialization of his characters, as he wished to keep them alive in our minds rather than on a screen. He maintained that having an actor provide Hobbes a voice would alter the link between the reader and the character, and I believe he’s correct. The connection between a child and a stuffed animal is genuine and somewhat magical; whoever Buddy is in my child’s imagination, I don’t want AI to overwrite that.
The profound cruelty of it all lies in the realization that there’s an endpoint to that bond. Upon becoming a parent, I was wholly unprepared for the way my toddler snuggling his stuffed deer would shatter my heart completely. It’s so innocent and lovely, yet it invariably brings a touch of sadness, knowing the day will come when he no longer seeks solace from a stuffed animal like Buddy. He will eventually outgrow this phase, and I’m not ready for that reality. Perhaps, in our attempts to spare our children some heartache over their lost companion, we’re genuinely trying to postpone our own as well.
All images and videos in this story were generated by Google Gemini.
