Meta's newest AI advertisement is designed to reject fear. Its message is that artificial intelligence will not make people lonelier, less useful, or less connected. But the campaign has drawn attention for a different reason: it uses David Bowie's "Five Years," a song about humanity facing mass extinction.
An AI ad built around optimism
The advertisement opens in black and white with a close shot of an eye. The viewer sees a flood of alarming headlines about AI: job loss, isolation, and global crisis. Then a voiceover pushes back against that fear.
The narration says that some people think AI will make people feel less connected or leave them behind. Meta's answer is direct: "We couldn't disagree more." The image then shifts from black and white into color.
From there, the ad becomes a montage of human connection. People open their eyes and smile. A couple dances on a rooftop and points at a rainbow. Teens swim in a lake. A child moves through a field. Friends embrace after being apart.
The voiceover frames Meta as hopeful about people and about the future. It ends on the line, "The future is for everyone." That line also appeared in a post from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who wrote that Meta has long focused on giving people ways to share, connect, and shape their world.
Zuckerberg also said that as AI enters its next wave, Meta wants to give every person tools to reach their full potential and to make sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone.
The song changes the message
The disconnect is not in the images. The ad is full of familiar scenes of happiness, reunion, movement, and social life. The tension comes from the music selection.
The soundtrack is David Bowie's "Five Years." Without context, the section used in the ad can sound uplifting because it repeats the word "people" and sits under bright, human-centered visuals. But the song itself is not an anthem of technological optimism.
In the source article's reading, "Five Years" is about the human race reacting after learning it has five years before a mass-extinction event. The lyrics immediately before the part used in the advertisement make the subject clear, including the line that the "earth was really dying." That context turns the campaign's emotional framing upside down.
Meta is using the song to support an argument that AI will make the world better. But the song points toward fear, collapse, and a countdown to the end. For a company betting hundreds of billions of dollars that AI will transform humanity, the contrast is hard to miss.
A wider pattern in tech culture
The Meta ad also fits into a broader criticism aimed at technology leaders: they often borrow from literature, film, and science fiction without fully absorbing the warning inside the work.
The source article points to several examples. Meta's Oculus used to give new hires copies of "Ready Player One," a science fiction novel set in a dystopia where a virtual reality company becomes too powerful and evil. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has directly cited inspiration from "Her," a film that warns about using AI for emotional support.
Palantir is named after Palantir, a seeing stone from the "Lord of the Rings" franchise used by the Dark Lord to spy on enemies. Elon Musk has been criticizing the "accuracy" of Christopher Nolan's adaptation of "The Odyssey," even though the story includes sea monsters, magic, and divine intervention.
These references matter because AI companies are not only building products. They are also trying to shape how the public feels about the future. When a company chooses a cultural reference, it carries the meaning of that reference with it, even when the ad highlights only the most convenient fragment.
AI companies are struggling to sell trust
Meta is not the only AI company facing criticism over a recent advertisement. Anthropic released a video that tried to show it understands AI risk and should be trusted to develop the technology responsibly.
That ad began with a burning house, then moved through still images including facial recognition surveillance, a person sleeping on the street, rows of tombstones, and laborers in a mine where raw materials for smartphones appear to be dug up. The voiceover featured questions such as "Can AI be trusted?" and "Who's gonna hit the brakes if we need to?"
Sam Altman responded to the Anthropic ad by saying, "I thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something." The reaction underlined how strange the current AI advertising race has become: companies want to reassure people, but some of the creative choices make the risks feel more vivid.
The public is not easily persuaded. A recent Pew survey found that only 16% of Americans think AI's impact on society over the next 20 years will be positive, while 40% believe it will be negative.
Why the mismatch matters
The issue is not simply that Meta picked the wrong song. The deeper problem is that the ad asks viewers to accept a confident story about AI while accidentally invoking a work about impending disaster.
That matters because AI messaging depends heavily on trust. Meta's ad tells viewers that AI can connect people and help distribute the benefits of technology. But when the music carries the opposite emotional meaning, the campaign becomes a case study in how quickly a polished message can undermine itself.
For Meta, the intended message is clear: AI should be understood as a tool for people, not as a threat to them. The soundtrack makes the pitch harder to hear. In an environment where many people already expect AI to have a negative impact, even small symbolic choices can become part of the argument.