New Google commercial imagines a Declaration of Independence written with help from AI

1 1 minute read

Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, asks a new commercial from Google: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?

With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely invisible Thomas Jefferson when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaborative process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting is scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with each participant apparently turning off their camera?), and then the whole thing is rounded out with electronic signatures; bring on the fireworks.

Since this is an advertisement from a technology company in 2026, AI obviously plays a role. The fictionalized founders use Google’s ‘help me visualize’ AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes of the meeting and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before rejecting the request for access to documents of King George III.

The whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek (at one point Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this over a beer?”), and the AI evangelism is relatively discreet compared to many other recent ads. And unlike that infamous Google commercial in which a father uses Gemini to write a fan letter for his daughter, this one eschews any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence would be improved with AI. Perhaps the most AI-forward element of the ad is the footage itself, which to my eyes has the eerie sheen of AI-generated video.

While the viewer comments YouTube And Instagram seem to be mostly positive, it may not surprise you that the response to Bluesky has been positive much more critical. Posters called the commercial “cringy” and “stunningly tone-deaf,” and the AI angle was the biggest target — like many users, including historian Angus Johnstonnoted that it is “amazing how little of this is actually AI.”

“Even in a corny fantasy joke, it is impossible to argue that AI is a useful tool for political organization, writing, or human cooperation,” Johnston said.