It starts with a single eye in black and white.
Panic. Headlines scream that artificial intelligence will steal jobs, isolate us, and trigger a global collapse. Then a voice cuts in.
“We couldn’t disagree more.”
Suddenly, color floods the screen. We see a cycle of smiling faces. A couple dancing on a rooftop pointing at a rainbow. Teens diving into a lake. A child running through tall grass. Friends hugging. The voiceover declares, “We’re betting on people. The future is for everyone.”
It’s a heartwarming pitch from a company that has reportedly invested billions into AI infrastructure. But the soundtrack tells a different story entirely. Meta chose David Bowie’s 1974 track, “Five Years.”
If you don’t know the song, you are missing the point.
I asked my brother—a blockchain analyst who doesn’t read fiction for fun—what the lyrics meant. He guessed climate change, zombies, or an asteroid. He wasn’t far off. The song depicts humanity receiving news that extinction is five years away.
“News guy wept and told us / Earth was really dying / Cried so much his face was wet.”
That’s the context Meta ignored. Or perhaps, misunderstood.
The section of the song used in the ad repeats the word “people” incessantly. Without the surrounding verses about weeping newsboys and dying worlds, the chorus sounds like a rallying cry. It sounds like hope.
But in the ad’s full context, playing a song about the end of civilization over footage of people enjoying life is… strange. Did anyone in the marketing department actually read the lyrics? CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the video with a caption about “giving every person the tools to reach your potential.” He believes in the optimism.
But tech leaders often lack literary analysis skills.
Consider the precedent. Meta’s former Oculus division gave new hires a copy of Ready Player One, a dystopian novel where VR corporations become evil overlords. OpenAI’s Sam Altman has cited Her as inspiration—a film warning against relying on AI for emotional support, which results in a hollow, lonely future. Palantir is named after the seeing stone used by Sauron to spy on his enemies in Lord of the Rings. Even Elon Musk recently argued passionately against the “inaccuracies” of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a movie featuring sea monsters and magic.
These leaders live in worlds of their own making. They seem to argue that the humanities should be mandatory for executives.
Meta isn’t the only one struggling with tone in this new era of AI advertising strategies. Competitors are racing to see who can create the most unsettling promotional material.
Anthropic, a major AI rival, recently released an ad that feels less like a sales pitch and more like a horror trailer. It begins with a burning house. Then, a montage of grim stillness: crowds under facial recognition cameras. A homeless person sleeping on concrete. Rows of tombstones. Laborers in dark mines digging for the raw materials that power your phone.
The voiceover asks, “Can AI be trusted?” “Who’s gonna hit the brakes?”
Anthropic wants you to believe they understand the risks, and that you can trust them to navigate them responsibly. Yet the mood is identical to Bowie’s track. It’s bleak. It’s about survival in the face of impending doom.
Sam Altman laughed it off, calling it satire. “I kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai,” he wrote, mocking rival Anthropic.
But satire doesn’t always land. Sometimes it just sounds like fear. Meta is betting on joy. Anthropic is betting on caution. Both are using art to sell a product that hasn’t fully arrived yet.
Which one are you going to believe when the eyes start watching back?
