Meta’s AI Ad Sparks Controversy with Apocalyptic Bowie Soundtrack

On Thursday morning, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, launched a new advertising campaign aimed at reassuring the public about the future of artificial intelligence. The ad, published to Meta’s official Instagram account, conveyed a message of optimism, stating that AI would not "make us less connected" or "leave us behind." However, the campaign quickly drew scrutiny due to its surprising choice of soundtrack: David Bowie’s 1972 track "Five Years," a song famously centered on the theme of impending global destruction.

The advertisement opens with a hopeful tone, featuring a narrator declaring, "Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds." This declaration accompanies a montage of heartwarming scenes: a toddler engaging playfully with a butterfly, two parents sharing a laugh with their infant, and a celebratory moment with NBA star Jalen Brunson waving at a Knicks Championship Parade. The visual narrative is designed to evoke human connection, joy, and community, seemingly aligning with Meta’s vision for AI as an enhancing, rather than isolating, technology. Notably, the ad also subtly integrates demonstrations of Meta’s smart glasses, highlighting use cases that steer clear of the more controversial aspects that have drawn criticism, such as surreptitious recording or harassment.

However, the choice of "Five Years" as the musical backdrop introduced a significant layer of irony and potential misinterpretation. The song, which serves as the opening track to Bowie’s seminal album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," sets a bleak tone for the concept album, which chronicles a rock star alien’s arrival on Earth just five years before its prophesied end. The snippet of the song used in Meta’s ad includes lyrics such as:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat, skinny people
And all the tall, short people
And all the nobody people
And all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people

These particular lines, focusing on information overload and the overwhelming presence of humanity, can be interpreted as a commentary on the complexity of modern life and the essential need for human connection amidst it all—a narrative Meta might wish to align with its AI message. Yet, the advertisement conspicuously omits the song’s opening verses, which unambiguously establish the apocalyptic premise:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

This omission raises questions about Meta’s understanding or selective presentation of the song’s core message.

When pressed for clarification, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan offered a defense of the song choice, stating that he "would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan cited a 1972 quote attributed to Bowie, sourced via BowieBible.com and originally from NME Magazine. The quote reads, "People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism… If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like… It’s going to be unbelievably technological.” This quote suggests Bowie, at least at that moment, viewed the song as a way to confront fears about the future with a sense of ironic detachment and even optimism about technological advancement.

However, the broader context surrounding "Five Years" and its creation tells a more complex story. BowieBible.com itself, the very source Brennan cited, also describes the song as speaking "of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption." Further contradicting Meta’s optimistic framing, drummer Mick Woodmansey, who performed on "Ziggy Stardust," recalled in a 2018 interview with Music Republic Magazine: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing. I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.” Woodmansey’s first-hand account paints a picture of a deeply emotional and somber creation process, directly at odds with a purely optimistic interpretation.

Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, weighed in on the controversy, noting that the practice of taking songs out of context for commercial purposes is a "time-honored tradition." He cited an example of a Carnival Cruise ad using an Iggy Pop song that is explicitly about heroin addiction. Larson also clarified that Warner Chappell Music, which acquired Bowie’s extensive music catalog for an estimated $250 million, holds the discretion over where his songs are licensed for use.

Despite the commercial realities of music licensing, Larson expressed strong disapproval of Meta’s specific application. "Meta choosing this specific song where the context for human connection is the apocalypse seems either really ignorant or really insidious," Larson told WIRED via Slack. He added with a touch of sarcasm, "I don’t know, maybe in that context it’s genius." Larson further elaborated on the emotional impact of the choice: "Hearing [Bowie’s] work used for AI just feels especially and specifically nonconsensual." This sentiment highlights a common concern among fans and critics when an artist’s legacy, particularly one as profound and nuanced as Bowie’s, is repurposed for corporate messaging that appears to disregard the original artistic intent.

Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted about the ad, reiterating the company’s commitment to AI: the company was "focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone." This aligns with Meta’s broader strategy to position itself at the forefront of AI development, portraying the technology as an empowering force for good.

The Meta ad is not an isolated incident but rather fits into a broader trend of tech companies attempting to assuage public fears about their rapidly advancing technologies. Over the past few years, several major players in the tech industry have launched high-profile, often heavy-handed, campaigns aimed at shaping public perception and generating goodwill.

Just weeks prior, AI developer Anthropic released its own evocative ad titled, “There’s hope in hard questions.” The commercial dramatically opens with a clip of a burning building and poses a stark question: “Who’s gonna hit the brakes if we need to?” This is followed by a fleeting glimpse of dozens of graves, directly addressing the existential anxieties surrounding AI development. The ad then gradually pivots towards a more optimistic tone, concluding with vague, aspirational questions like, “What if we started to be more human again?” juxtaposed with serene images of families and a majestic humpback whale. The campaign attempts to acknowledge the dangers of AI while ultimately steering viewers towards a hopeful, if undefined, future.

In 2024, Google also released an ad that many found baffling. The commercial depicted a father teaching his daughter, an aspiring athlete, how to hurdle. The narrative then shifted to the father deciding to use Google’s Gemini AI to draft a letter, written from his daughter’s perspective, to decorated hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The ad’s premise seemed to strain credulity, struggling to connect the practical, everyday utility of AI with the emotional core of father-daughter bonding or athletic aspiration.

Perhaps the most notorious example of a tech company ad misjudging public sentiment was FTX’s 2022 Super Bowl commercial starring Larry David. The ad featured David playing various curmudgeonly characters throughout history, dismissively rejecting groundbreaking inventions like the toilet, the fork, and the lightbulb. The commercial culminated with David dismissing FTX itself, followed by the text overlay: “Don’t be like Larry. Don’t miss out on crypto, on NFTs, on the next big thing.” The irony became painfully clear just nine months later when FTX, once a prominent cryptocurrency exchange, filed for bankruptcy amid widespread allegations of fraud.

These examples underscore a fundamental challenge for the tech industry. While it is understandable that companies would deploy every available marketing tool to cultivate goodwill and mitigate public anxiety, these ads often highlight a deeper struggle. Many tech companies appear to be failing to sell products that independently convince the public that they are not actively making the world worse. Instead, they resort to ambitious, often abstract, and sometimes tone-deaf advertising campaigns, attempting to bridge a perceived gap between technological innovation and societal benefit through narrative rather than demonstrable impact. Meta’s use of "Five Years" is the latest instance in this ongoing effort, an attempt to infuse a sense of human connection and optimism into the AI discourse, even if it means recontextualizing a song about the end of the world.