Well, this news story could be called "better late than never."
In late February 2025, it was revealed on the SL forums that Linden Lab was using AI to make an ad. The reaction from the poster, "It looks like a bad ad for an AI chatbot app. SL has fantastic creators and content, why use AI generated video?" What followed were posts by upset and confused people, "Why would the Lab do this? This isn't representative of SL AT ALL. New users gonna log in with a default Ruth & duck walk & log right back out cause that video is bait & switch."especially since Linden Lab could, and was, doing proposed ads done entirely within Second Life.
Hamlet Au ended up talking to Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager. Oberwager responded that the intention was to use AI only for testing ads, and expressed surprised that they'd somehow leaked out and were seen by the residents. Hamlet would guess the Lab never asked residents for help thinking it would take too long to get permissions.
Some people in the forums reacted with skepticism, "Good grief. Tell me you don't know how A/B testing works without telling
me you don't know how A/B testing works, especially with FB ads." "They have no idea what the coffee they make tastes like. They will fail to find the magic bullet because they refuse to really taste the coffee." "As a marketer in RL I am sitting here shaking my head." But others were more hopeful, "Going by the article of Hamlet, it seems they did understand the mistake they made and hopefully will be correcting it." Later comments were a discussion about what kind of advertising might work. But there didn't seem to be any general agreement.
Oberwager would admit of the controversy, "I f**ked this one up," and say to any residents reading, "Send me videos. Look at these bad ads [we made], and make them better."
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On a personal note, sorry for missing this story. Thankfully it doesn't happen often.
Bixyl Shuftan
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