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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

> The solution is clear: yes we use AI, and we're okay with it.

Except that some portion of D'addario's customers--presumably those that actually buy their guitar strings to create music via real guitars--aren't okay with it.

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Yeah, I think that case is absolutely wild, because ostensibly the point of the recorded music was to showcase the strings.

Wouldn't this be basically fraudulent advertising?

AFAIK, a lot of commercials, particularly for cars, haven’t really shot the physical product in decades and instead used CGI. I think Ikea also makes heavy use of renderings. It’s all kind of insane. OTOH, a hundred years ago ads all used illustrations… I guess you’d have to show that the real strings don’t sound or behave as shown in the video, however it was created.

In this case there's a difference between CGI and generative AI. However they came up with arrangement of pixels on the screen, the product is still portrayed accurately.

Now, unless the company in question got their new strings into Sona training data, I wager that the generated output has little casual connection with the product being advertised. If I found out IKEA's newest product looks nothing like on the commercial, because the ad was using generative AI and hallucinated something approximating the product, I'd be looking at it as fraudulent too.

IMO in D'addario's case, the analogy would be like using CGI and illustrations to illustrate a painting.

Also, I think when judged by the court of public opinion, the overwhelming answer was "yes, it's fraudulent", or at least "misleading and useless" as most people even complained that the song sounds like an overproduced mess where any string would sound the same.

Maybe they prompted "make it sound like the guitars have D'addario strings"

Its telling that instead of showcasing the quality of their strings, they used an LLM to generate the sounds their strings should make.

Shows how much trust they have in their own product.

I don't understand why you're getting downvoted, but you're correct. That's the reason for the complaints and the company has already taken an anti-AI stance precisely for this reason.

It’s not worth getting upset at one or two people downvoting. This is a large forum. There will always be some of that. Plus we have no clue why they did it, it could be valid

I'm not upset, that's not the important part of my message.

Whatever adjective you want to use, that doesn’t apply here like other sites. If it’s not important I’d say just don’t bother with it.

I am not bothered or anything of the sort.

I’m glad we agree it was a needless addition then.

Yes your replies were needless.

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