Lone SpelunkerJun 7
Jon Uriarte

Another great story about the impact of AI with no mention to it in the headline of the story:

In South Korea a Starbucks marketing campaign is created using AI and executives don't even bother to open the email attachments to check the proposals. The campaign was published on the date of a pro-democracy protesters massacre calling it Tank Day and using slogans clearly drawing from the deadly military attack, which felt deeply unrespectful to the victims. The AI most likely learned that from far-right forums like Ilbe where mocking the victims is common.

They cancelled the campaign hours after publishing it but it was too late, the CEO has been sacked, card payments went down a 26%, refunds haven been requested from prepaid cards, police is investigating and Starbucks asked costumers to refrain from directing their anger to staff.

#ai #aislop #starbucks

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/06/starbucks-south-korea-tank-day-promotion-blunder

How a Starbucks marketing stunt spiralled into mass boycotts in South Korea

A botched tumbler promotion on the anniversary of a pro-democracy massacre unleashed a boycott, police investigation and political firestorm

The Guardian
Jun 6 at 5:44amWeb
Show threadJon UriarteJun 6
How ironic that my toot has been automatically retooted by a bot that on its description says it is curated and handmade while it instantaneously boosts anything AI tagged
Show threadEmperor Rhizic the MoreWrongJun 6
@jonuriarte it's real easy to write a bot that reposts from a certain tag, don't even need to write one there's a ton out there already; but it's not curation
Show threadChris [list of emoji]Jun 6

@jonuriarte

This could be a 30 Rock subplot. Wow!

Show threadUncle SlackyJun 6
@jonuriarte Reminds me of how Ford Prefect chose his name on the basis of it being so popular.
Show threadÖlbaumJun 7
@uncleslacky He also thought cars were Earth’s dominant species, didn’t he? I think I missed that in the book (I hadn’t heard about that model, in French they called him Ford Escort, I think,) but in the movie he tries to shake hands with a car.
@jonuriarte
Show threadDJ Sundog from the *new* toot-labJun 6
@jonuriarte almost fifty years old and still applicable, if people would just understand.
Show threadVincent SparksJun 6

@djsundog @jonuriarte No, but you see, these computers are far more advanced than the ones we had in the 70s, and can "understand" natural language, so they're capable of making management decisions.

What? No, they're worse at logic than their older counterparts, actually.

No, they've never been held accountable. What does that have to do with anything?

Show threadEFJun 6
@jonuriarte #AI produces #slop so does #starbucks so a match made in heaven.
Show threaddushintoJun 7
@jonuriarte I mean, the story is about all of the humans who fucked up and how they were all held responsible for the AI output
Show threadoscarfalconJun 7

@jonuriarte

How about we distribute this throughout the world and make the coffee seller PAY! Fuck Them!

Show threadJocelynephiliac Jun 7
@oscarfalcon starbucks south korea is completely independent from the US corporation, its just a brand license. The article states this if you read it
Show threadoscarfalconJun 7

@twipped

Still Applies...

Show threadTheriacJun 7

@twipped @oscarfalcon

starbucks south korea is completely independent from the US corporation, its just a brand license.money still flows Stateswards and in Korea they have to brand themselves as if they are the US company so reputation also flows.

Offensive AI campaigns plus forcing female staff to write creative and personalised cup messages pending punishment for failure is now the global Starbucks brand image regardless of which franchise carried it out.

Show threadPetra van CronenburgJun 7
@Theriac This.
@twipped @oscarfalcon
Show threadJaneishlyJun 7
@jonuriarte All the translators in the world going "It would have cost you like 40$ to get a human to do this. Maybe 200$ if you were paying top rates. And they'd have said 'you can't do this' and given you a campaign that would have worked".
Show threadLe Monolecte 😷🤬🐧 Jun 7
@jonuriarte L’IA est un symptôme : celui d’une économie qui a partout fait la promotion de gens stupides et/ou paresseux, mais avides de notoriété et de récompenses. Ce sont eux qui portent cette technologie au pinacle. Ils aiment le fait qu’elle remplace les gens qui savaient et qui travaillaient réellement, ceux qui les faisaient passer pour les bouffons qu’ils sont en réalité.
L’IA est là pour flatter les gens sans aucune « intelligence naturelle ».
Show threadMatt T.Jun 7
@jonuriarte A lot of people seem to believe that it was an intentional dog whistle thing and the executives just misjudged how angry it would make normal people. In which case the AI thing is basically an enabling factor, or perhaps an excuse. I don’t know Korean or understand enough about Korean history and society to weigh up the evidence there, but “Right-wingers in echo chamber overestimate their popularity” is certainly a plausible story...
Show threadPetra van CronenburgJun 7
@jonuriarte Just a note to your post: AI systems don't learn like humans, they have no intelligence. They are trained by their human makers on that right-wing stuff. Then the programs just build combinations after patterns. Imagine it like a big failing autocorrection. Only what the trainers fill in, comes out, in many possible combinations.
Show threadRob CainJun 7
@jonuriarte - Ha! serves 'em right. ;)
Show threadGlen T, heated, not stirredJun 7

@jonuriarte This isn't just an AI story. It's also about how the chaebol class is so disconnected from mainline South Korean society that they did not see the problem. This is stoking anger more than any AI aspect.

The chaebol class don't need the help of AI to be right wing: their grandfathers being the supporters of the President who murdered the Gwangju May 18 demonstrators; and their fathers opposing the ultimately-successful 1987 demonstrators.

Show threadVolineJun 8

@jonuriarte @mick_collins

https://kolektiva.social/@Voline/116710285296480286

Voline (@[email protected])

Sarah Jeong, brilliant Korean-American editor at The Verge. Responded to a request that she Koreasplain this scandal with what follows: OK! So my suspicion here is that the role of AI in this fiasco is overexaggerated because the company is trying to find a scapegoat that isn't "Korean Starbucks is run by conservatives and Korean conservatives' brains have rotted from the inside out." That said, part of why Korean conservatism is so insane at the moment is (like everywhere else) because of AI brainrot and a general disregard for truth. But trivializing the Gwangju massacre is basically baked into shitty conservatism at this point. The actual death toll numbers is a decades-old politicized fight. It's why the region itself is a liberal stronghold; nobody likes being told you deserved it or that the violence you saw was fake. People looking for the reason why no one said no to the terrible Tank Day promo, which is obviously conservative brainrot. A bunch of managers are claiming they didn't properly supervise an AI-generated campaign. IDK it just smells like deflection for a culture of deferring to a chaebol's bad ideas https://bsky.app/profile/sarahjeong.bsky.social/post/3mnpjbrdca22e #Korea #AI

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