“Followers flooded posts with angry comments, pointing out that AI-generated branding completely misses the point of supporting local small businesses, because that's not a small business activity. You're basically routing money from what could be a local actress or a spokesperson to basically Claude Anthropic or Google or somebody else.”
sputnikintelligence.com
Asked about a brewery that used an AI-generated brand ambassador and drew heavy backlash, Hewitt explains that the character openly admitted being AI, so the anger was not about deception but about money that could have gone to a local person.
Oh, yeah, fantastically well. And before, really quick, before I get into that, because I know people are going to ask or think it, our logo was made by a person before. Our logo was, yeah.
All our graphics. Our logo is not AI.
Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, yeah. So totally went well. So a South Jersey craft brewery thought that using an AI spokesperson instead of a real person was a clever way to save a buck and boost engagement. And on the on the surface, it actually sounds like, hey, maybe that, maybe that would work. But they quickly learned that that was a good way to boost the kind of engagement that no business actually wants. So the brewery in question is Swedesboro Brewing and the AI spokesperson was a blonde lady named Sarah. They gave her a name. So they use this virtual character on Instagram to announce new beer releases and tap room events. You know, and in the videos, Sarah freely admitted to being an AI-generated brand ambassador. So there was no actual trickery involved. They weren't trying to pass, they weren't trying to pass her off as being a real person. So, yeah, it seems seems fine, right? But no, no, not at all. In the firestorm that ensued, the brewery tried to justify the decision by comparing hiring a celebrity or a commercial actress to using AI. They were like, this is the same thing. It's like, yeah, the internet…
Yeah. There was, I'm in a Facebook group that is pro brewers. It's professional brewers talking to that. I, you know, I've got some friends in there and, of course, keep an eye on kind of what's going on in the industry. But there was a small brewery owner that posted in there and he mentioned…
vocal about it. You
know, people don't like, and Brian, we've talked about it. I understand the, you know, I understand the artists. You know what? There's a big uptick in AI music and Spotify and different channels having this. Some are tagging AI music. Some are just not allowing it. When I'm being lazy, I'll flick…