Meta launches AI optimism ad set to David Bowie's 'Five Years' — a song about human extinction

Meta has released a new advertising campaign promoting an optimistic vision of artificial intelligence, but the music choice has created an unintended and ironic backlash. According to TechCrunch, the ad uses David Bowie's 1972 song "Five Years," a track whose lyrics describe a world where humanity learns it has only five years left to live before an unspecified apocalypse.

"Five Years" is the opening track of Bowie's landmark album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," and is widely regarded as one of rock music's most poignant apocalyptic narratives. The lyrics describe a society grappling with its impending end — a starkly different emotional landscape from the AI-optimism message Meta intended to convey.

TechCrunch reported that Meta's ad positions AI as a transformative force for good, but the choice of a song about annihilation undercuts that message in ways the marketing team may not have anticipated. This is not the first time a tech company has stumbled over classic song licensing without fully grasping the cultural context of the music.

Social media reactions were swift and largely critical. Users pointed out that anyone familiar with the song's meaning would have recognized the incompatibility, raising questions about cultural sensitivity within Meta's marketing operations. Some commentators framed the incident as symptomatic of a broader pattern in tech advertising: focusing on the aesthetic of borrowed cultural artifacts while ignoring their original meaning.

Meta has not yet issued an official response regarding the music choice. Whether the company pulls the ad or addresses the criticism directly will determine whether this becomes a lasting PR misstep or a quickly forgotten gaffe.