Meta's big AI optimism ad is soundtracked by a song about the end of the world

Meta has rolled out a new brand campaign presenting artificial intelligence as a tool for connection and opportunity, its most direct attempt yet to counter public anxiety about the technology. The film opens in black and white with a person scrolling alarming headlines about AI taking jobs and isolating people, before a voiceover pushes back: "Some people will have you believe AI is going to make us feel less connected. That it's going to leave us behind." The visuals then shift to colour, showing people sharing moments of joy and connection.

The problem is the soundtrack. The campaign is set to David Bowie's "Five Years", the 1972 opener of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in which Earth's population learns it has five years before the planet dies. TechCrunch, which reported the launch on 23 July US time, noted the mismatch, and commentary across trade and consumer press has piled on since. A campaign engineered to calm fears about AI is scored by an apocalypse anthem.

The tonal stumble matters because the audience is already primed to be unforgiving. Pew Research Center polling published in June found just 16 per cent of Americans expect AI to have a positive impact on society over the next 20 years, with around 40 per cent expecting a negative one. AI companies are now spending serious brand money messaging into that scepticism, and every execution gets read closely for signs the companies do not understand the anxiety they are trying to address.

Meta has not publicly responded to the criticism at the time of writing, and there is no indication the campaign will be pulled or re-scored. It is also worth noting the charitable read: some commentators suggest the song choice is deliberate, acknowledging the doom narrative before rejecting it, which mirrors the film's black-and-white to colour structure. If so, that intent has not survived contact with the audience.

Why it matters for Australian marketers: Meta remains the default performance channel for Australian small and mid-sized advertisers, so how the company manages trust in its AI push has direct flow-on effects for the brands built on its platforms. The campaign is also a compact lesson in creative governance. Music is not set dressing, it carries meaning, and a licensing decision made for mood can invert a message entirely. For local teams leaning on AI tools to generate or assemble creative faster, the miss is a reminder that the expensive failures are rarely in the production, they are in the judgement layer nobody assigned.

Worth noting for balance: the campaign itself, its markets and its media spend have not been detailed publicly by Meta, and the sentiment figure is US polling rather than Australian data. Criticism so far is commentary volume, not evidence of commercial damage.

Sources: techcrunch.com (23 July 2026), bestmediainfo.com, pewresearch.org (June 2026)