Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, A new ad asks Google: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?
In the ad, with the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” Thomas Jefferson, who received a nagging text from Ben Franklin, describes a largely unprecedented middle project that led to a very Google-centric collaborative process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting is scheduled in Google Calendar and held remotely via Google Meet (each participant probably turns off their camera?), then everything is finalized with e-signatures; display fireworks.
Of course, since this is an ad for a tech company in 2026, artificial intelligence has a role to play. The fictional founders use Google’s ‘help me see’ AI tool to try different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on a meeting, and the founders ask a chatbot for advice before denying King George III’s request for access to documents.
It’s all very cheesy (at one point Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this with a beer?”) and relatively tame compared to AI evangelism. many other recent ads. And unlike that infamous Google ad in which a father uses Gemini to write an adoring letter for his daughter, it avoids any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence will be enhanced by artificial intelligence. Perhaps the most AI-driven element of the ad is the visuals themselves, which in my eyes have the unusual sheen of AI-generated video.
When a viewer comments YouTube and Instagram seems mostly positive, you might not be surprised to learn that Bluesky has the answer more critical. Posters declared the commercial to be “cheesy” and “shockingly tone-deaf”, and the AI angle was the biggest target – even as many users, including historian Angus Johnstonnoted that “it’s amazing that it’s actually AI.”
“Even in a fanciful joke, it’s impossible to argue that artificial intelligence is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human cooperation,” Johnston said.
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