[00:00:04] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Thursday, October 8th. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. Anxiety around AI is ramping up. From potential widespread job losses to the technology possibly killing us all in the not-too-distant future, AI is becoming scary to a lot of people. And that has many in the tech industry asking the same question. Will people like AI more if it's cute?
[00:00:27] We seem to have rapidly entered the era of the stuffed animalification of AI. There's Meta's muse assistant, which looks like a furry toy yeti. My muse's name is Lizzie. Joey. Chippy. Oba. Peaky. Grumpy. Toodles. Penelope Muse. Frank. Last week, OpenAI introduced its new AI agents, Dots, a gaggle of colorful fuzzy shapes with glasses and berets and googly eyes. I'm gonna call you... I'm gonna call you Alfred. You got it. I'm Alfred.
[00:00:58] And don't forget Anthropix's Clawed, spelled with a W. That's the little pixel art crab that pops in to help on the company's Clawed code projects, like a crustacean clippy. But can the cute little critters counteract AI skeptics' anxiety about the technology? Joining us now to discuss is WSJ advertising editor Suzanne Vernitsa. Suzanne, why are so many AI companies turning to mascots now? Well, I think, let's be clear, it's part of the plan, right?
[00:01:27] OpenAI, it looks like a Disney movie right now, right? It's Pixar's little characters that are dancing all the screen. Every company out there has brought this to life in some fashion. It dates back to the 1950s. And look, the history is proven. There are billion-dollar brands out there that were built on the backs of these characters. Tony the Tiger, Mr. Clean. I mean, these ad mascots are part of the playbook that everyone eventually sort of falls for.
[00:01:55] I think doing it at this time makes a lot of sense because there has been this overarching fear in the ether about AI. And even the companies that are creating them are sounding the alarm bells. So I do think that if you introduce characters, number one, they make it more personable, right? It's something that you need to build an emotional attachment from. And look, the AI companies, they're in a battle, battle for users. And think about the technology. Not only is it scary, but it's nondescript.
[00:02:23] So they've all been very careful about the imagery that they've put into ads. Like, stay away from anything robotic, anything that looks like a machine. So now let's find some furry characters, right? And they do. They look like comics, stuffed animals. That's not going to kill me in my sleep. And I can actually build a relationship with one. Yeah, it's like Pixar designed a Tamagotchi.
[00:02:43] But, you know, I do think of mascots mostly as like, you know, all over supermarkets and baseball games, but not so much for tech companies themselves. I mean, at least not since Clippy was, you know, giving everyone suggestions in their Microsoft Word docs. Why have they been relatively uncommon in this industry for the tech companies themselves? I think you've seen them used sporadically. There are brands that have had them in the past. I think what it is is because the technology companies are always reinventing the technology.
[00:03:13] So you can't really wed into something and then it changes, right? The whole point of having a mascot is to build a relationship and you don't want something that all of a sudden, that's not actually what the company does anymore, right? Microsoft actually just sort of sign-lined their latest little character that they were using as used on some things but not really in advertising. When you talk about these companies, it's all about how much ad dollars you have, right?
[00:03:37] Meta really never had a mascot and we knew it as, you know, Facebook for years and then they changed their name. They were nowhere in the AI talk. All of a sudden they have Muse, right? And since they brought out that little fuzzy thing, he is everywhere. If you were watching college football this weekend, he was on the screen. He is all over everybody's feed and he's decked out in different outfits. He's like shopping in one. He's working out in another.
[00:04:05] It's a vehicle so their advertising becomes a little bit more relevant and actually people can embrace the advertising. It doesn't mean like it's going to take away all the fears. That's probably a total order at this point. But when you're trying to battle for users now, which is the big problem business-wise, which service are you going to use? You need a mechanism within advertising that is a shortcut. And these are a great shortcut because it gives a way for people to have an emotional attachment to something.
[00:04:32] And when you look at OpenAI and the dots, very interesting. They named them all, right? And they showed different characters. But when it comes to your own dot that you create, you can name it. And I thought that's kind of curious. And then the more I talked to the branding experts out there, they were like, this is ingenious. And one in particular was like, listen, you can't name something that you hate. You're building a relationship and you're making this little thing yours. And it's like, oh, think about your puppy.
[00:05:00] That's a great mechanism to sort of care about something. That's a piece of technology that you're kind of half afraid of. But you're making it your own. Yeah, I can't imagine, you know, like an insurance company or a pharmaceutical firm letting its customers name their mascot. Right. I mean, some of them have tried to do like contests and stuff like that. But I do think that's a tough task. Most of the companies that we're talking about here, it's taking them years to let their brand loose on the web, to give their brands over to creators. And don't fool yourself.
[00:05:30] Those people largely are scripted. They want to make sure that the brand message comes through. So, Suzanne, I love a fuzzy little guy. But how does this work when they're being pitched as serious business tools? I think that is the issue with having mascots, right? So in Anthropics, little Claude character, they have something that if they want to have fun with, they can.
[00:05:53] So they make cool T-shirts and giveaways and they seed it with the developing community because that's who this is for. They probably aren't going to push him out in ads. Whereas OpenAI actually has two business models, right? It really wants the B2B side of the company. But it also has a free version of ChatGPT.
[00:06:18] And that's allowing them to have a character that appeals to everyone because they have a consumer product. So I do think it all comes down to who are you actually reaching here? Is it a B2B customer? Maybe not use it on your advertising when you're going after them, but you can seed them with a community that's going to embrace it. Developers love that little thing. I mean, if you go on Etsy, you can find anything. There's a guy that created Claude the Crab, a plushie.
[00:06:46] He's selling this thing for $149 and he sold a whole bunch of them already. What do you think about these new mascots? If you're a listener on Spotify, let us know in the comments and tell us what you'd name it to. Coming up, can these characters actually help win over AI skeptics? That's after the break.
[00:07:18] Welcome back. So we've talked about this new era of mascots for these tech companies. But Suzanne, with, as you've mentioned, so many news headlines out there about rogue agents hacking government websites and warnings that the technology is developing dangerously fast. How much of an effect can a fuzzy face have on public perception? I don't think it's going to have a big perception changing ability, especially if these companies continue to find themselves in hot water.
[00:07:45] And if things go really bad and, in fact, will eventually work against them, right? Because you can totally imagine somebody's going to take the little crab and make a video. And the same thing for the cute little dots. The first privacy problem where somebody's data gets out or somebody's leaked their financial information, they're going to be used against them. So, yes, there's potential for this to go all sorts of wrong. But I do think they're spending almost a billion dollars since they started.
[00:08:13] And this is relatively new sector on advertising. They need shortcuts. They need some way to make this thing appealing. These things are shortcuts to get their messaging across. And I think that's as far as this is going to go until they can get to a place where there's not a headline every day. It does feel like a bit of an own goal, though, by some of these companies.
[00:08:34] I mean, some of their executives have been spending years talking about how their technology is so powerful that it's going to put millions of people out of work and possibly destroy our entire civilization. Can mascots, of all things, really help dial down the fears about AI? Well, you're looking at it through one lens. These companies think about the hundreds of millions of dollars that they're putting into advertising. If you pick a power role about advertising, what have they been doing? It's about playing up the humanity, the humans.
[00:09:03] This is not about taking human ingenuity or creativity away. This is your partner. So on top of these little mascots are hundreds of millions of dollars of ads that talk about AI not as a job killer but as a companion. They're telling their story, and that's what they're trying to combat. So between the mascots, all of the ads that tell you we're not taking your job, this just makes you smarter. It makes the humans smarter.
[00:09:30] So I would argue it's just another tool in their toolbox. And when you look at it holistically, that's what will help them. That's WSJ Advertising Editor Suzanne Vernitsa. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by me with supervising producer Katie Ferguson. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow with a new episode. Thanks for listening. Thank you.