Meta’s Latest Uplifting AI Commercial Features a Song About the Apocalypse

On Thursday morning, Meta shared an advertisement on its official Instagram account stating that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” The ad features the 1972 David Bowie song “Five Years,” which reflects on themes including the apocalypse.

“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever you want — but we’re betting on people, and we believe in those odds,” the narrator asserts, as a child interacts with a butterfly, two parents enjoy laughter with their baby, and Jalen Brunson greets the crowd at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also carefully emphasizes the positive applications of its debated smart glasses, steering clear of instances like covertly recording women.)

The excerpt of “Five Years” featured in the advertisement includes these lines:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things to store everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people

And all the tall, short people

And all the nobody people

And all the somebody people

I never thought I’d need so many people

It notably omits other sections of the song, including the opening lines:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

When contacted for a comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan emphasized that he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan provided a quote from 1972 that he sourced from BowieBible.com.

“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” the quote states, which originates from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”

However, BowieBible.com also points out that the song “depicts a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, along with the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”

Additionally, BowieBible.com cites a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey recalled regarding the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was genuinely crying.”

According to Jeremy D. Larson, deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, using songs out of context for commercials is a long-standing custom. He cites a Carnival Cruise ad that features an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also notes that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they ultimately decide how his songs are utilized.)