Sure it can, if by “you,” you mean people in general.
Ads have gone from static banner images to interactive games, so it just makes sense they will evolve into AI-based marketing tools where they will talk to you like a salesperson and try to talk you into something.
This isn’t new, just IRL, and I’m not even sure about that. Mass Effect 2 had this in 2010, you’d land on a station and get close enough to one of those cylindrical vertical billboards and it would start talking to you. I think the movie Minority Report, or a sci-fi movie like that, did the same in the early to mid 00s. Targeted, personalised advertisements.
Apple says the new Siri (powered by Google Gemini) will be able to provide “emotional support.” I’m not kidding. Apple said that. Apple markets itself as the privacy company, they say the new Siri won’t have Google or Gemini branding on it (press X to doubt), but I fully expect the thing to try to sell me something. Maybe not mine, but I imagine the store models will come up and ask you which iPhone you have (or straight up detect it via Bluetooth) and then try to convince you why the new one is better. Compare this to the old Siri which, when asked what the best smartphone is, it would say “the one in your hand.” It was meant to mean itself, but some people (including me) took it to mean “if you have a smartphone you don’t need a new smartphone, just use what you have.”
I’m already semi-convinced that they are already getting paid to have the AI push certain products or recommendations without any good logic as to why. It may not be intentional though, considering that it is trained on social media brainrot where humans do the same.
It’s not intentional from the AI companies, but active effort from the brands. It’s GEO, the AI equivalent to SEO.
I won’t get into the specifics, but its not that hard to influence the AI towards your brand.
Now that they’ll start selling ads though, I wonder how things will play out.
No, mostly because I don’t use CHATGPT or any of the services that were made due to getting cursed inspiration from it. Will other people be convinced? Probably, as they might already have some metrics that support the potential profitability of such a disgusting move. Chatbots have been constructed to prey on vulnerable people; so it’s a matter of time before more people are manipulated into being good little consumers and buying whatever the highest bidder has paid LLM companies to shill for them.
