Updated on February 13, 2025
After years of browsing cheese at my local grocery store, I only recently noticed that many of them have detailed descriptions – and they are highly entertaining. The one that caught my eye first was for a Murray’s fromager d’affinois:Â
It quivers. It beckons. That luscious, silky texture. That rich, so-close-to-butter flavor. It’s Brie’s creamier, decadent cousin, and it wants you to buy it champagne and strawberries.*
Apparently, it’s the Fabio of cheese, a melty wedge playing the sax on a bear-skin rug. I questioned reality, looked around to see if the store staff was having a laugh, and read other descriptions to see if they were equally as cheesy. They were.
And then I bought the cheese, of course.
AI & Super Bowl Ads
Every year, the Super Bowl sets out to take the way we sell products to the next level, and big theme this Sunday was AI-related ads.
One of those was for the Wisconsin Cheese Mart. It was supposed to be about how Google Gemini helps the busy shop owner write his cheese descriptions, but eagle-eyed viewers spotted a hole: the AI write-up of a gouda said it accounted for 50% to 60% of the world’s cheese consumption. Gouda’s good, but not that goud.Â
Some said it was an AI hallucination (in fairness, who doesn’t hallucinate about cheese?) A Google exec said it came from several sites on the web that list this statistic. They later edited the ad, no harm done to Big Cheddar.
Hallucination or bad source, it doesn’t really matter. The biggest lesson for businesses, including hosts and managers, is that yes, Gemini and ChatGPT and Salesforce and all the other AI-powered tools out there can help cut tedious time, but we must still check the work, especially before taking it to prime time. (See our AI and marketing guides here and here.)
It’s also a nice reminder that a little cheese can go a long way – in marketing and on a cracker – and only humans can do cheese right. A bit of research found photos of the fromager d’affinois description from before the days of ChatGPT. That means a human wrote that description, printed it up, and stuck it in a wedge to the delight of many.Â
And AI could never beat the surprise and chuckle that brought me.
Alexa Nota,
COO and Co-Founder of Rent Responsibly
*Picture at the end of this email to prove it.
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Dana Lubner represented Rent Responsibly at the Information Management Network’s (IMN) STR Forum in Miami, moderating The Advocacy Edge panel. From left to right: Dawn Yeskulsky, Jonathan Wicks, Rachel Alday, Dana Lubner, Rich Munroe, and Chad Wise.
*The cheese. Five stars.
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