Is it just critics and writers on the internet not taking these ads as jokes, or are normal people also reading them as serious? That seems to me the key question re: whether these are mistakes.
I know nothing about the ad business, but I feel like Apple must have engaged with an irregular agency for this. They're so out of character for the company.
It is not at all clear to me that the most-upset of these critics are among “everyone”.
“Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy?”
This does not come off as a better-literate reading in context, either, I think.
As another comment mentioned, they're tone deaf if not dystopian: If this is the best image Apple could contrive for their AI features....Jesus Christ.
As to the perpetually lazy bit, the ads are literally predicated on making a "humorous" situation around a thoughtless self-involved sociopath and the office clown. Supremely out of character for Apple, and they gave their agency too much rope.
I’m not, the couple links I’ve seen here, including this one, have been written as if the ads aren’t intended to be funny, and judge (and describe) them as if the ads are trying to straightforwardly communicate something, rather than being a particular common sort of humorous ad—and, perhaps, failing at what they’re trying to say and communicating the wrong thing, or being bad for other reasons, but that’s not how this piece comes across.
I’m not wondering if everyone who doesn’t like them didn’t understand them, but whether the ones bothering to blog about it are misreading the ads? Has it just been the links I’ve happened to have followed on the topic here?
The product is asking your to give up your creativity, your will for self improvement, your potential to excel. Once you externalize these parts of your brain to someone else who you have to pay to think for you, after a long enough time you will have nothing at all to offer society yourself.
It's a classic 'someone is being mildly bad, but the amusement of everybody it works out anyway'.
I'm thinking they're aiming to capitalize on mixed feelings people have about AI. These ads let the viewers have their social objects to diss AI - "haha, AI is for the losers like in that Apple ad", while at the same time making them say, in the privacy of their thoughts, "but I am not a loser and I could use such functions too!".
(This should also be read as a joke.)