[HN Gopher] Pomelli
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Pomelli
        
       https://labs.google.com/pomelli/about/
        
       Author : birriel
       Score  : 259 points
       Date   : 2025-11-01 23:09 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
       | Link goes to a page with a minimal hint and a video.
       | 
       | Their blog post has some detail:
       | https://blog.google/technology/google-labs/pomelli/
       | 
       | Kagi said the "Key features and functionalities of Pomelli
       | include:                   Content Generation: Pomelli can
       | generate various marketing assets          such as social posts
       | and ad creatives by analyzing         a company's website to
       | understand its brand identity                  Brand DNA: The
       | tool builds a "Business DNA" from a company's          website to
       | ensure generated content is consistent with the brand's identity
       | Campaign Creation: It aims to generate entire on-brand marketing
       | campaigns with minimal user input              Editable Assets:
       | The generated campaign assets are editable              Canva
       | Alternative: Pomelli is positioned as a competitor         to
       | design tools like Canva"
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | Is Google going to put all of its API users out of business?
         | 
         | Seems like Google will kill a whole bunch of SaaS companies
         | with this.
        
         | emmelaich wrote:
         | I've heard of a little cost cutting at Canva. Some point to a
         | possible IPO next year. But also I wonder if AI generally and
         | products like this are causing increased competition.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | OK, we'll put that link at the top and
         | https://labs.google.com/pomelli/about/ in the toptext. Thanks!
        
       | Avicebron wrote:
       | [edit: there is a bug] where it doesn't render LaTeX from the
       | scraped website when injecting it into the campaign materials..
        
         | ugh123 wrote:
         | Sounds like a bug?
        
       | nomilk wrote:
       | 2 min tl;dr video by Culture Kings (streetwear brand) founder
       | 
       | https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17L3FKCBbf/
        
       | unangst wrote:
       | "Pomelli is desktop only for now. Please switch to a computer to
       | continue." It would be nice if there was at least a screenshot
       | for mobile users so they could determine if this was actually
       | worth a second visit.
        
         | skoskie wrote:
         | There's a video right on the landing page that shows it in use.
         | Played fine on mobile for me.
         | 
         | But to answer the question, it looks a lot like a Canva
         | competitor.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | AI is going to kill Canva, Figma, and Adobe. Without a doubt.
           | 
           | Nano Banana alone obsoleted all of Photoshop. (And the
           | Chinese versions of Nano Banana are even better!)
           | 
           | I'm most worried for my friends in creative though. I have
           | some extremely talented friends at WPP and other agencies.
           | Everyone is shaking in their boots.
           | 
           | Nobody's buying ads because of the economy, then these tools
           | are nipping at their heels. They've already had one massive
           | round of layoffs, and there's another one supposedly
           | happening early next year.
           | 
           | Where are these millions of people going to go? These are six
           | figure income earners.
           | 
           | There are five million marketing professionals in the US. If
           | half of them lose their jobs, then what? What's lined up for
           | them after this?
           | 
           | If AI fails, the economy goes boom.
           | 
           | If AI succeeds, the economy goes ... bigger boom?
           | 
           | I used to think the tools would wind up creating more work,
           | especially in narrative creative work. Outside of A24 and
           | indie/foreign films, Hollywood is so trite. These models drop
           | Pixar/Disney VFX into the hands of every YouTuber - and that
           | could be really cool when used by the right people. Like the
           | Corridor Crew folks.
           | 
           | Maybe gaming and media will see a boost, but advertising and
           | marketing folks are really going to get hit hard.
        
             | wizzledonker wrote:
             | The reason most creative media is good is because you see
             | the _vision_ of a creative team or individual.
             | 
             | If the _vision_ is diluted due to lack of control afforded
             | by AI tools, then the tools won't be used.
             | 
             | Many times in Hollywood have we seen directors spend
             | _unjustifiable_ amounts of money in the pursuit of creative
             | control.
             | 
             | Hand camera tracking a dinosaur in Jurassic Park,
             | developing a novel diffraction algorithm for THE ABYSS,
             | hand-drawing 3-Dimensional computer animations for 2001,
             | creating an entire scale model practically for a single
             | fight scene in LOTR.
             | 
             | AI allows you to get _anything_. The best movies are a
             | direct reflection of a _particular vision_. AI can't
             | provide this and I see no way to solve it.
             | 
             | A natural response is - well directors already outsource
             | some creative control to VFX artists so why not to a
             | machine instead.
             | 
             | Because an artist _can_ control everything. Even if the
             | artist is prompting a model, at the end of the day an
             | artist can drill right down to the tooling itself
             | (photoshop for example) and exactly achieve the vision.
             | 
             | I don't see AI achieving this granularity _while
             | maintaining its utility_. It's a sliding scale of trading
             | utility as a time saving device for control.
             | 
             | If you lean too far to the control side, well you might as
             | well fire up photoshop. If you lean too much to the utility
             | side, you sacrifice creative control.
             | 
             | When looked at under this lens the utility of AI generation
             | is actually limited as it solves a non existent problem.
             | One can think of it as an additional piece of tooling for
             | use only as a generational tool where there is less need
             | for control, such as for background characters.
             | 
             | The team at Red Barrels, for example, train a local model
             | on their own artwork to automatically generate variant
             | textures for map generation. Things such as this. No need
             | to be doom and gloom about this stuff.
        
               | echelon wrote:
               | > lack of control afforded by AI
               | 
               | You should look at ComfyUI.
               | 
               | Control is here, it's just not widely distributed or easy
               | to use.
               | 
               | If you're patient, you can fully control the set,
               | blocking, angles. You can position your characters,
               | relight them, precisely control props, etc. You have
               | unlimited control over everything. It's just a mess right
               | now.
        
             | goshx wrote:
             | > and Adobe
             | 
             | Have you seen their announcements during Adobe Max? The AI
             | features are mind blowing. Adobe is alive and well.
        
               | bigiain wrote:
               | > Adobe is alive and well.
               | 
               | I wonder.
               | 
               | They're doing well with their existing customer base of
               | digital creatives and related industries/professions.
               | 
               | Who may all be the buggy whip makers of the late 2020's.
               | 
               | Way too many of the people/companies who traditionally
               | paid highly skilled and creative Photoshop users are
               | rapidly moving away from doing that in favour of cheap
               | GenAI slop.
               | 
               | I'm sure there are people in graphic design,
               | illustration, videography, photography, UI/UX, 3D art,
               | augmented reality, social media, creativity and design,
               | collaboration and productivity, and education who are
               | super excited about what Adobe is doing. I'm also sure
               | almost all of those people are very concerned about their
               | career choice and future (or are ignoring the reality of
               | what's going on around them).
               | 
               | Sure, the top graphic designers in the world will still
               | earn great money being highly creative for key clients.
               | But the vast majority of people in those fields are not
               | the top in their field, and the vast majority of clients
               | those people invoice are going to consider cheap AI slop
               | "good enough" for their businesses and use cases.
               | 
               | I have a 30+ year career in web related roles, working
               | more or less closely with graphic designers, artists,
               | illustrators, photographers, and other website
               | development related professions. All of the ones I've
               | remained friends with over that time are either deeply
               | concerned about their career future, or have already
               | jumped ship and become nurses, carpenters, teachers,
               | caregivers, and even priests and drug dealers...
        
               | creato wrote:
               | > All of the ones I've remained friends with over that
               | time are either deeply concerned about their career
               | future, or have already jumped ship and become nurses,
               | carpenters, teachers, caregivers, and even priests and
               | drug dealers...
               | 
               | Aside from the last one, that kinda sounds like a win for
               | society.
        
               | echelon wrote:
               | > The AI features are mind blowing.
               | 
               | It doesn't look like they developed any models. The 3d
               | relighting and 3d manipulation are all 3rd party models
               | given a UI.
        
       | rich_sasha wrote:
       | Dare I ask: who owns the IP to all the generated content? User?
       | Google? Some complex arrangement governed by a 20-page ToS?
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | AFAIK and this may have changed, but at least in the US, AI-
         | generated content is not copyrightable so it's effectively
         | public-domain.
        
           | trenchpilgrim wrote:
           | That's incorrect. Start at "legal framework" on kage 7:
           | https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-
           | Intell...
           | 
           | The short version is the copyright office says it is possible
           | works by creative human authors using AI tools are partially
           | copyrightable in many cases.
        
           | 0x62 wrote:
           | It's not that any content created by AI is not copyrightable,
           | it's that work created solely by AI without human input is
           | probably not copyrightable.
           | 
           | See also [1] mentioned in the framework linked by sibling
           | comment, AI copyright is essentially a logical extension of
           | this.
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dis
           | put...
        
           | bayarearefugee wrote:
           | I think in reality its very much still undecided law in most
           | ways that practically matter and a lot of decisions will
           | still be made based on the pay rates of the lawyers for the
           | different parties involved.
           | 
           | As a simple example, assume a specific LLM-based tool (like
           | Google's own, or someone else's) happens to generate a social
           | media mascot for you that looks a lot like the modern
           | rendition of Mickey Mouse.
           | 
           | Let's see how long that creation flies as public domain
           | because it came out of an AI (that almost certainly consumed
           | a giant amount of content produced by Disney as part of its
           | training).
        
             | thih9 wrote:
             | Such content is already available. As an experiment I
             | entered "zombie elsa" into google and I found some very
             | disturbing youtube videos, e.g.:
             | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M5urB3u4aRk .
             | 
             | If you want a specific tool, here is Elsa with a cigarette
             | generated using Midjourney and more:
             | https://journeyaiart.com/tag/Elsa .
        
           | galaxyLogic wrote:
           | This is what I've been pondering, people are using Claude
           | etc. to produce software. Do they think about this copyright
           | issue at all? Basically whatever they produce with Claude
           | should be not copyrightable.
           | 
           | But what happens if they MIX some of their own code with AI-
           | generated code, is that combination then their copyright?
           | With such combined output it would be very difficult to
           | determine which part was created by human, which by AI, and
           | which by AI but slightly modified by human.
           | 
           | In the domain of graphics the AI could put in some markers
           | which tells the graphic is AI-generated, but with code that
           | is probabaly not possible, code is code and can always be
           | edited by humans.
           | 
           | A separate question is that if I use Claude to generate some
           | code but then stamp the output with my copyright notice, am I
           | doing something illegal?
        
           | rich_sasha wrote:
           | Copyright or not, surely there's ToS that you're expected to
           | just click through and not read.
        
       | dietr1ch wrote:
       | > Pomelli by Google Labs is currently not available in your
       | region.
       | 
       | xd
        
         | logoji wrote:
         | Same, do you think this will work with vpn?
        
         | Razengan wrote:
         | Fucking region gating in this day and age.
         | 
         | Sometimes even with a US account some things flop when you try
         | to use them while traveling. You'd think the richass CEOs
         | travel a lot so they would notice this problem but then you
         | realize they never use their own products and have meat
         | intelligence do all their shit for them anyway.
        
           | aatd86 wrote:
           | xD you're delivery made me laugh. But I think it is a
           | combination of getting the product out of the gates as fast
           | as possible, test on the main market, and also deal with
           | foreign currencies, legislation and pricing later.
        
       | bigiain wrote:
       | Suspicious-me is wondering how Google are going to treat AI
       | generated marketing slop created using Pomelli differently to
       | slop created with other tools (or even human created marketing
       | content) in search ranking?
       | 
       | If I were an EvilGoogle manager, I'd have an enshittification
       | playbook complete with a timeline and KPIs/OKRs mapped out - and
       | probably already linked to individual engineer's promotion/RIF
       | futures.
       | 
       | They know exactly who's using this tool and which company they're
       | using it on behalf of.
       | 
       | In the short term I'd have those companies webpages using Pomelli
       | generated content to rank highly, and for advertising on those
       | pages to show higher then usual clickthrough rates - and probably
       | gradually downrank non-Pomelli pages on their sites. Once it
       | becomes well known that Pomelli generated content genuinely
       | generates more revenue that other options (even though that's
       | only because Google have their thumb on the scale), everybody is
       | going to jump on the gravy train, and a sub-industry of Pomelli
       | consultancies/agencies will show up, like specialist SEO firms
       | did way back.
       | 
       | Gradually that new "Pomelli Content Optimisation" will capture a
       | significant-enough slice of the web content generation pie, and
       | Google will start to sell them "Pro" subscriptions and features,
       | while at the same time reducing functionality and effectiveness
       | of the tools individuals and end-user companies have access to -
       | driving even more revenue into the PCO industry.
       | 
       | Eventually, when enough companies are fundamentally reliant on
       | external PCO vendors, Google will ramp up the pricing of their
       | tools.
       | 
       | (With any luck AGI will have turned us all into paperclips before
       | that runbook plays out.)
        
         | aster0id wrote:
         | I doubt that the product folks over at Google overseeing an
         | experimental project like this have such outsized influence
         | over something core like the ads engine
        
           | bigiain wrote:
           | I'm feeling deeply cynical here. I wonder if the people at
           | Google overseeing this experiment are from or also oversee
           | the ads engine team?
        
         | hhh wrote:
         | sounds really illegal and unlikely
        
           | ksenzee wrote:
           | Illegal, yes.
        
         | lysace wrote:
         | They are going all in on tolerating third party AI slop on
         | Youtube. That feels like an executive decision at this point.
         | 
         | Guessing: because they have AI products in the pipeline that
         | can create Youtube shorts or similar.
         | 
         | This aspect will be interesting to watch.
         | 
         | Edit: Youtube Premium should include an optional AI slop
         | filter.
        
         | blazespin wrote:
         | the way it will work is ai slop will rank high, and pomelli
         | will generate the best ai slop.
        
         | Culonavirus wrote:
         | Google _actually_ doesn 't give a single flying fuck about AI
         | slop because they produce it themselves and believe AI slop
         | will feed their quarters going forward.
         | 
         | They sometimes pretend to care but not really. You can already
         | stuff Google Merchant full of ai-generated slop images that
         | have little to do with how an actual product looks like and
         | that's something they could easily control if they wanted...
         | but do they? Nah, they're going the other way, creating shit
         | like Product Studio and that's just the beginning.
         | 
         | Make no mistake, Google is going all in on slop - search, ads,
         | youtube, merchant, workspace, cloud, everything
        
           | realusername wrote:
           | That's also my opinion, they didn't care about non-AI
           | generated slop either before that so why would they now?
        
             | mcny wrote:
             | If they cared, it would be trivial to scan for and block
             | ads on YouTube that literally say "I am Elon Musk. Click
             | the link below to message my assistant to start making
             | money. This is a special message only for you." With a
             | badly deep faked video of Elon Musk.
        
         | ryukoposting wrote:
         | I doubt Pomelli would get ranked higher. Google biases ads to
         | their highest spenders. The more you spend, the better your ads
         | perform. Nobody using something like Pomelli is giving Google
         | enough money to rank highly. They could outrank the very lowest
         | spenders, namely scammers and dropshippers whose ads are
         | already AI slop anyway. But, really, who cares?
        
       | tuananh wrote:
       | this will kill a bunch of startups.
        
         | doctorpangloss wrote:
         | No matter how it pans out.
         | 
         | If no one uses it, that means the market has proven, no
         | audience for this kind of product. Google loses, everyone else
         | loses.
         | 
         | If everyone who wants this sort of thing uses it, that's it,
         | Google won, everyone else loses.
         | 
         | The outcome to sell to investors is the least believable:
         | people will pay for some offering when a nearly identical one
         | is available directly from Google for free. And anyway, they
         | have the best generative creative tech, so how could anything
         | be better than Google's?
        
         | xyzal wrote:
         | Bill Hicks would not mind
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdjQICcD-XA
        
         | dennisy wrote:
         | Yeah, I was thinking the same. Quite a few YC companies are
         | going after this.
         | 
         | What sort of market dynamics do people predict here, winner
         | takes all? Especially when this is integrated into the
         | platforms of distribution.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | The AI start-up field is going to be eviscerated. I too have
         | the irresistible urge to bolt a SOTA LLM back end on a custom
         | harness and charge $20/mo, but the total lack of a moat and
         | ease of replication kills any motivation.
         | 
         | You have to either have some big cajones or be totally lost to
         | think it's a good idea to create a startup that is just a
         | simple cheap veil on someone else's extremely advanced and
         | expensive product
        
       | commenter8 wrote:
       | Does anyone think the world is better with this in it?
        
         | metacritic12 wrote:
         | Honestly, I'm fine with Google doing it. If not them, then some
         | regulatory arbitrage startup will do it with way more de-facto
         | scam and fraud. Google is not some morale arbiter for the long
         | arc of technology -- look at how they gatekept their LLM
         | technology and got wrecked by the people who actually
         | commericalized it: OpenAI.
        
           | LPisGood wrote:
           | They didn't gatekeep LLM technology; they published their
           | results in the open.
        
           | jrflowers wrote:
           | I think when it comes to gatekeeping you are mixing up the
           | organization that invented the basis for language models and
           | gave it away for free with the one that does not release
           | model weights because they're too spooky
        
       | LPisGood wrote:
       | For an ad tech company, this is both on brand and pretty cool.
       | I'm an AI skeptic and I support this.
        
       | nikodunk wrote:
       | Hot take from an AI skeptic: between this, Nano Banana and
       | generative AI integrated into Gmail for repetitive emails, I'm
       | starting to actually use Google's AI for tasks I hate most.
       | 
       | Google appears to have their AI product game together!
        
       | rgblambda wrote:
       | Seeing a lot of "I'm an AI skeptic and <insert praise for new
       | Google product>" highly upvoted in this thread.
        
         | wartywhoa23 wrote:
         | Yes, that triggers my template detector as well.
        
       | keiferski wrote:
       | I've seen many small businesses do well on TikTok and Instagram
       | by eschewing all fancy graphics and technology, and just talking
       | into their phone's camera like a normal person. "Hey I'm Joe, I
       | just opened a cafe down here. It's always been my dream, etc."
       | The more quirky and human the video, the better it does.
       | 
       | I know this new tool looks to be for static graphics; but I do
       | think the same thing applies. Not using AI-generated polished
       | graphics will become a differentiator.
        
         | vasco wrote:
         | Yes but those guys need their marketing to work. Most marketing
         | people just need to spend a budget. For those guys now they can
         | pump out infinite crap to spend their budget so that you
         | rEMemBeR tHeM lATer.
        
         | bko wrote:
         | I think you might be seeing guys who do that well so it's a bit
         | survivorship bias. For most, if you just record yourself
         | talking for 1m and watch it back as a video it's incredibly
         | painful and awkward. The filler words, tangents, weird pauses.
         | It really made me have respect for great speakers
        
           | keiferski wrote:
           | No, I have seen plenty of awkward people talking about their
           | new business. The awkwardness is inferior to charismatic
           | speakers, for sure, but it's still better than generic AI
           | slop marketing content.
        
             | ojr wrote:
             | I did this with youtube for a while but I have to swallow
             | my pride, (AI thumbnail, engagement bait title, AI voice
             | narration) is better than pure loom-like organic video for
             | ads
        
             | gretch wrote:
             | All of those people have already pass through a filter of
             | self-selection
             | 
             | There's a person out there that's 1) knows how to bake
             | amazing cookies 2) has no desire to record tik toks
             | 
             | Why is that you need both of those things combined to have
             | a successful cookie business? Can't we desire a world where
             | just being good at baking cookies is good enough? You don't
             | ALSO have to record a bunch of tik toks?
        
               | sowbug wrote:
               | Some products are so good they don't need marketing. Some
               | marketing is so good it can sell a bad product. Most of
               | the time you need both.
               | 
               | Even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis had a
               | great product (idea): if doctors wash their hands, fewer
               | of their patients will die. But his marketing
               | (personality) was off-putting, and his ideas weren't
               | accepted until after his death.
        
         | awillen wrote:
         | This works for the subset of people who have a good story or a
         | real connection to their brand, but that's just not most
         | businesses. I buy and operate e-commerce brands, and I can't do
         | it both because I really don't want to be on camera and because
         | "hey I bought this company that sells leather handle covers for
         | cast iron pans, and I personally don't use them but the
         | cashflow was good" is not so compelling as a message. Sometimes
         | you just need messages that convey the value proposition of the
         | brand. (And FWIW they are nice handle covers, I just prefer to
         | use a kitchen towel to grab my cast iron.)
         | 
         | That said, I think video generation is at the point where
         | someone will probably develop a product that fakes the kinds of
         | videos you're talking about in the near future.
        
           | soulofmischief wrote:
           | Interesting. Do you feel like the values you're propagating
           | into the world align with your own personal values?
           | 
           | I know personally that if I recognized some kitchen apparatus
           | or product is redundant, and a something I already own such
           | as a rag will do, I couldn't in good conscious perpetuate
           | what I see as needless consumerism just to put another dollar
           | in my wallet.
           | 
           | Basically, if I couldn't get on tiktok and make an earnest
           | video about why what I'm selling is useful and worth
           | existing, and why it personally matters to me, I don't think
           | I could sell that product in good conscience. Even if the
           | customer truly thinks it's a great product, if I recognize
           | the inherent waste and redundancy, I just can't buy into it.
           | 
           | I just always think about the chapter in Fight Club when the
           | narrator's house blows up:
           | 
           | "You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa
           | I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple
           | years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at
           | least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set
           | of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then
           | you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used
           | to own, now they own you."
        
             | overfeed wrote:
             | > Do you feel like the values you're propagating into the
             | world align with your own personal values?
             | 
             | > Basically, if I couldn't get on tiktok and make an
             | earnest video about why what I'm selling is useful and
             | worth existing, and why it personally matters to me, I
             | don't think I could sell that product in good conscience.
             | 
             | Have you ever involuntarily gone to bed hungry even once in
             | your life?
        
               | soulofmischief wrote:
               | Yes. I was homeless from 16 to 22. Both of my parents
               | were drug addicts, in and out of jail/prison. I don't
               | speak to anyone in my family, because they side with my
               | extremely abusive grandfather, who raised me and
               | frequently savagely beat me for not sharing his extremist
               | Christian values. Until very recently, I had an extremely
               | thin social support network.
               | 
               | I was awarded a full-ride scholarship to multiple state
               | institutions after high school due to high test scores,
               | but a vindictive teacher illegally altered my grade last-
               | minute because I stood up to her for my peers, and
               | disqualified me from being eligible. I was still 17,
               | attending high school on my own, homeless, and had no
               | parents to push back, and no money for summer remedial
               | courses.
               | 
               | I couldn't apply for government aid because my mother was
               | committing tax fraud by claiming me as a dependent
               | despite not providing me a home or resources, and refused
               | to help. There was no economic opportunity in my rural
               | town and I didn't have a car, so I proceeded to struggle
               | for years, scraping by, risking my freedom, while I
               | rounded out my skill set to become employable in tech
               | despite not attending college.
               | 
               | I've gone much longer than a day feeling hungry. Feeling
               | starving. Feeling my muscles eat themselves and my face
               | and jaw tighten from lack of nutrients. Friends in high
               | school used to make fun of me for looking emaciated. I
               | was a vulture, eating anything I could find, frequently
               | stealing food to make up for an insatiable appetite. Now
               | I have the opposite problem because of metabolism changes
               | after years of malnutrition, and sometimes struggle with
               | stress-related eating disorders.
               | 
               | I'm going to do you the favor and not make such asinine
               | implications about your own background.
        
               | overfeed wrote:
               | > I was a vulture, eating anything I could find,
               | frequently stealing food to make up for an insatiable
               | appetite.
               | 
               | Now I'm even more confused because you experienced this
               | first hand but can't imagine how someone can engage in
               | practices that have nothing to.do with personal values to
               | keep their families fed and sheltered.
               | 
               | > I'm going to do you the favor and not make such asinine
               | implications about your own background.
               | 
               | Weren't you just shaming someone whose personal beliefs
               | and background you don't know just 2 comments upstream?
        
               | soulofmischief wrote:
               | Can you point out when I shamed them?
               | 
               | I asked them a question and presented my own perspective
               | and motivations for asking the question. They followed
               | up, and I have responded. I see nothing wrong with
               | discussing socioeconomics on Hacker News. Maybe instead
               | of being negative, making insinuations and accusing me of
               | shaming someone, you could just provide your own
               | perspective, which I'd be happy to engage with.
               | 
               | > Now I'm even more confused because you experienced this
               | first hand but can't imagine how someone can engage in
               | practices that have nothing to.do with personal values to
               | keep their families fed and sheltered.
               | 
               | Principles are principles. I live and die by them. I'm
               | not perfect, but it's the thing I try to maintain that
               | separates me from those who have contributed to the
               | suffering in my life. I don't expect everyone to
               | understand this.
               | 
               | I'm not religious, but I do have a patron saint, Joan of
               | Arc. She was burned at the stake at 17 for refusing to
               | bow to the Church. I haven't been killed for my beliefs,
               | but there were definitely times I feared that I would be.
               | I have suffered immense abuse for standing by my
               | principles, when most would have caved.
               | 
               | I'm not asking anyone else here to hold to my standards,
               | but I do have my own standards and the nature of growth
               | involves finding chances to challenge them.
        
             | awillen wrote:
             | I would say a couple of things:
             | 
             | 1. Just because I don't use something doesn't mean that I
             | think it shouldn't exist or be sold. People can make their
             | own choices. A product isn't bad or useless or unnecessary
             | because it doesn't align with my preferences. I'm fine with
             | people being able to make their own choices about what they
             | buy. Also, I generally don't think people should have to
             | live a totally ascetic lifestyle. I have three monitors -
             | certainly redundant, but fine. I have art on my walls -
             | could've gone without that. I have a dog who I buy toys and
             | food for - not strictly necessary. These things are all
             | more than fine in my book.
             | 
             | 2. There are other reasons to be in business besides deeply
             | caring about the business itself. The biggest benefit to
             | this business is that it doesn't require a lot of day-to-
             | day work, and I can do that work whenever I want. That
             | means I can almost always be there for my kids. That's what
             | matters to me. I would take a job that I don't particularly
             | care about that lets me put them first over one that I'm
             | deeply passionate about that takes them away from me any
             | time.
        
               | soulofmischief wrote:
               | Thank you for sharing your perspective. I do agree that
               | we don't need to extremify asceticism. I certainly own
               | useless crap.
               | 
               | I think I do specifically have a minimalist approach to
               | kitchens inspired by setups such as hundred rabbits'
               | https://100r.co/site/cooking.html plus I also am becoming
               | increasingly concerned with my carbon footprint given the
               | climate-related extinction event we are currently facing,
               | and that probably strikes out personal promotion of any
               | unneeded kitchenware.
               | 
               | I'm curious about the economics of what you do, if you've
               | ever written about it elsewhere.
        
         | spaceman_2020 wrote:
         | What you're talking about is the primary marketing collateral.
         | But any good marketing campaign needs a ton of secondary or
         | even tertiary marketing collateral
         | 
         | The first "real video" you talked about is meant to grab
         | attention and tell users, honestly, what the product is about
         | 
         | But they're not customers - yet. They need to be reminded about
         | your brand again and again
         | 
         | You can't run the same video every time - for one, its
         | repetitive. And for two, its disruptive on the wrong channels
         | 
         | You will need static images and basic videos and even tweets
         | across platforms to remarket to your audience
         | 
         | That's where tools like this come in handy. You grabbed
         | attention with the first video. But now you need to tell users
         | that if they buy tomorrow, they get 15% off.
        
       | nextworddev wrote:
       | Just how many Gen ai products are they half assedly launching (in
       | case of Google).
        
       | koakuma-chan wrote:
       | It's pretty bad. It generates mangled text and objects with bad
       | proportions.
        
       | wewtyflakes wrote:
       | On multiple levels; a snake eating its tail.
        
         | wartywhoa23 wrote:
         | May it gnaw itself down for good.
        
       | vasco wrote:
       | Now google can sell you the AI that will design the ads for you
       | that you will pay Google to serve. So nice of them.
       | 
       | Still waiting for the AI LLM based ad autobidder so that I can
       | just plug a machine to Google and press the "give them all my
       | money" button.
        
       | camillomiller wrote:
       | I've been thinking long and hard about how AI could disrupt the
       | field of ads creative, because a significant part of my income is
       | tied to motion design applied to html5 banner campaigns for large
       | companies in Europe.
       | 
       | What I see is that clients that invest in a campaign do not want
       | to think about what an AI can produce. They don't want to
       | interact or brief an AI, they don't want to do feedback rounds
       | with an AI. They want a group of professionals that knows them to
       | take over and do it all. If the professionals then use some AI
       | for it, they mostly don't care.
       | 
       | This is true so far for any campaign that allocates relevant
       | funds (mid 5 figures and upwards). When it comes to the actual
       | creation phase, right now AI is fundamentally immature and
       | incapable of being controlled past the creation of static
       | content.
       | 
       | All the motion and animation part for example is still somehow
       | terra incognita for these tools. Take Adobe Animate, which is the
       | go-to tool for anything 2D-animation, or Google Web Designer.
       | Zero AI-features, simply because you can't LLM frame by frame
       | animations and have a result that is as precise as you need it.
       | Or maybe you can, but for some reason these companies don't see a
       | business case for allocating resources to this specific
       | development.
       | 
       | These tools can be great for smaller business that won't have
       | access to large campaigns, but as someone else mentioned, why do
       | that when hiring a working gen-z social media native student will
       | cost you slightly more, and possibly perform 100-times better
       | with their native social media aesthetic?
       | 
       | Ps: Pomelli means door handles in Italian, and that's... weird?
       | Feels like a name randomly regurgitated by an LLM as well.
        
       | curiousgal wrote:
       | I am genuinely surprised that people still get excited about
       | Google announcing new products/services given their track record.
       | Unless it's core to its businesss model, this will probably get
       | axed in a couple of years.
        
         | whoisthemachine wrote:
         | Well, this does involve generating ads, so...
        
       | jwr wrote:
       | This is depressing. We are already meat in the google ad-serving
       | machine that tracks us, profiles us, gives us "free" stuff
       | (gmail, anyone?) in order to feed us advertising.
       | 
       | Now even that advertising will be AI-generated. The human is
       | reduced to the ultimate consumption machine, to be fed stuff paid
       | for by advertisers and generated by machines.
        
         | Culonavirus wrote:
         | > The human is reduced to the ultimate consumption machine.
         | 
         | Question is, if the AI bros are right about a "new industrial
         | revolution", will there be consumers to consume if all the
         | wealth is concentrated in the top 1-2% of the population? (the
         | owners of AI hardware and software)
        
           | ddalex wrote:
           | I keep seeing this worry about "who will consume?!!?" This is
           | entirely unfounded - the AI will develop its own marketplace
           | and AI will consume.
           | 
           | The question is, will be there anything left for humans to
           | consume ? will we survive ?
        
             | vbezhenar wrote:
             | Buy acre of land, plant potatoes, raise chicken, pay your
             | tithe to your landlord. People will survive, for sure. Not
             | all of them, but enough.
        
               | jeremyjh wrote:
               | There won't be any such leases if machines can make more
               | productive use of the land than a potato farmer.
        
             | Thorrez wrote:
             | Currently AI isn't allowed to own assets AFAIK.
        
               | ddalex wrote:
               | Of course they are allowed, they're called "corporations"
               | because they have a "body" and legal rights.
               | 
               | The datacenter is held by a corporation, and the
               | corporation does what the resident AI wants it to do.
        
           | impossiblefork wrote:
           | If that happens it won't be the AI people who benefit. The
           | wealth will be concentrated among the present capital owners.
           | Even many top AI experts who contributed critical research
           | won't become rich.
           | 
           | You'll see the wealth concentration you talk of, but it'll be
           | completely different people who get this wealth, maybe even
           | people who own businesses where wages are a large outlay.
        
           | reaperducer wrote:
           | _Question is, if the AI bros are right about a "new
           | industrial revolution", will there be consumers to consume if
           | all the wealth is concentrated in the top 1-2% of the
           | population?_
           | 
           | Who cares? That's two quarters away. What matters is that I
           | got my Lambo and my speedboat today. Let the poors worry
           | about the future.
        
           | simianwords wrote:
           | The answer is already in your question. The original
           | Industrial Revolution concentrated wealth and yet increased
           | the baseline wealth for everyone else.
           | 
           | There is no reason to believe otherwise in this revolution.
        
             | rogerrogerr wrote:
             | Though for those of us above the current baseline (e.g.
             | basically everyone reading this), it's not guaranteed that
             | the new baseline will be above our current lifestyle.
        
               | simianwords wrote:
               | Why? Industrial Revolution increased everyone's baseline
        
               | rogerrogerr wrote:
               | If you're a software bro making $300k today, and lose
               | your job to AI, it's very unlikely that the new baseline
               | for everyone is going to be that of a $300k income. At
               | least not anytime soon.
        
               | simianwords wrote:
               | sure but whatever mechanism allowed for jobs to exist a
               | few years/decades after industrial revolution will apply
               | here as well. with some jobs lost and chaos in the middle
               | that is un-avoidable.
        
           | overfeed wrote:
           | This is why they are looking at government coffers with a
           | hunger in their eyes. They don't care for the long term
           | societal stability; the richest of them fantasize riding it
           | out in their island bunkers.
        
         | nkrisc wrote:
         | People can choose to not consume crap they don't need. They
         | won't, but they can.
         | 
         | Advertising is now just worthless noise to me because I
         | generally don't buy stuff anymore but what I need.
         | 
         | I can't imagine why anyone would buy most of the crap I see
         | advertised, but they do. Halloween was a recent example: how
         | many tons of plastic shit for costumes was shipped from China
         | only to be thrown away the next day? How much candy was bought?
         | Even when I was 12 I started to see what a disgusting
         | consumerist affair the whole thing was and it lost its appeal.
         | And yet we have adults participating.
         | 
         | The ad machine exists because people let it be successful.
        
           | nashashmi wrote:
           | > They won't, but they can.
           | 
           | That is the problem with this advice. "Can choose not to" is
           | code to stop someone complaining. "Just don't use it then".
           | It sounds equivalent to the "love it or leave it" slogan used
           | in the 70s in America.
           | 
           | We don't leave. We fight. We don't stop using. We openly and
           | publicly criticize
        
             | lrvick wrote:
             | Leaving it is the right choice though. The corpos will
             | never care about you. I consume no ads, or Google software,
             | and still do anything I want in the tech world.
        
               | macintux wrote:
               | I left Facebook, but its algorithm continues to actively
               | encourage the divisiveness and misinformation that's
               | poisoning the world I live in.
               | 
               | Sometimes "you don't have to participate" isn't strong
               | enough advice, not that I know what the answer actually
               | is.
        
           | FinnLobsien wrote:
           | Would you make the same argument for smoking?
           | 
           | I think we're in a world so dominated by the attention
           | economy and things optimized to hook us in that it's hard to
           | just say "I quit".
        
         | realusername wrote:
         | Personally I'm okay with that as it weakens the argument that
         | ads are content, a dubious argument often used by ad companies.
        
           | mcny wrote:
           | I wonder if these ads will still be called "creatives".
        
             | realusername wrote:
             | I'm sure they will, this industry is completely delusional
             | and out of touch with reality
        
           | 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
           | One of the best arguments in favor of ads is that high-
           | quality ads act as an honest/credible signal that a firm is a
           | serious business offering a serious product. Through making
           | the production of high-quality ads cheap, people who are
           | truly passionate about their small business will be
           | "disrupted", and scammers/fly-by-night operations will be
           | "supercharged".
        
         | bko wrote:
         | I don't know, I feel like it will help smaller businesses
         | without a budget for a designer or even design taste compete
         | with larger companies.
         | 
         | Maybe that's good and maybe not. But big brands always had this
         | splashy advertising, so this evens the field
        
           | Retr0id wrote:
           | Is this really aimed at the smaller businesses, or is it
           | aimed at the big businesses who want to cut down their
           | marketing department?
        
             | rafaelmn wrote:
             | Thing is at that scale cutting down on marketing with slop
             | has huge implications. It's not like this thing blew he
             | ceiling, it just lifted the floor.
        
             | bko wrote:
             | Obviously both parties will have access to the tech, but I
             | don't see giant brands just using something like this to
             | hack an ad campaign. Either way it doesn't really matter.
             | It just levels the playing field
        
               | Retr0id wrote:
               | The first time I saw an AI-generated ad was Coca Cola's
               | 2024 xmas ad.
        
               | mbreese wrote:
               | That's where I stay to see some benefits. Will AI ads (or
               | media) be better than an expert human made ad campaign?
               | Not at the moment.
               | 
               | But can a small business use AI tools to make a better ad
               | for their smaller budget? Probably.
               | 
               | I was thinking about this in the context of some videos
               | posted here a few weeks back. They were AI generated
               | video shorts. They weren't fabulous, but they were funny
               | and entertaining. There was a small writing team behind
               | it that was able to produce solid video content that
               | would have been way out of their budget just a few years
               | ago. But with AI tools they were able to get their ideas
               | made and content available.
               | 
               | That's where I start to struggle... I'm not a fan of pure
               | AI content, but if it helps smaller teams on smaller
               | budgets compete a little more, or helps individual
               | creators get to tell their story when they otherwise
               | couldn't, is AI content completely wrong?
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | Giant _companies_ don 't use do ad campaigns anyway. They
               | hire _ad agencies_ , which themselves may hire _smaller
               | ad agencies or consultants_ , and those are more than
               | happy to innovate and improvise using whatever trick can
               | come across.
               | 
               | Note, I said _companies_ , because _brands_ at this point
               | are merely labels, most of them throwaway; big companies
               | use them the same way small companies do, including to
               | run fly-by-night scams on burner brands. They 're more
               | than happy to delegate it to smaller agencies, too.
               | 
               | Point being: there's not much correlation between
               | branding, ownership structure, and what advertising
               | techniques can be applied by what organizations.
        
             | awillen wrote:
             | I tried this out, and the stuff it produces is just simple
             | text overlaid nicely on images you supply. If you have a
             | designer, it'd take 60 seconds to knock one of these out,
             | plus you'd already have a style guide that this app
             | wouldn't follow closely enough to use. This is definitely
             | for small businesses.
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | Advertising is a negative sum game[0]. Helping smaller
           | businesses without budget compete with larger companies on
           | advertising is just contributing to making life worse for
           | everyone.
           | 
           | There's no evening the field, only deepening the muck.
           | There's no persistent advantage possible here, because
           | whatever new cool thing a small business can do, a large
           | business can do more of it and better
           | 
           | --
           | 
           | [0] - It's a zero-sum game in the sense that everyone's
           | effort only serves to cancel out the effort of their
           | competitors, but it's hugely negative to society in absolute
           | terms, because all that effort _burns labor and natural
           | resources_.
        
         | ErroneousBosh wrote:
         | A Modest Proposal:
         | 
         | We set all our servers to listen on port 4443, and walk away
         | from the whole sorry mess.
         | 
         | Make it all again from scratch. Block whole swathes of IP
         | ranges known to belong to FAANG.
        
       | dennisy wrote:
       | Lots of startups are launching in this space. Creating ad copy
       | and assets is obviously a hot idea.
       | 
       | I would love to hear what people's takes on the market dynamics
       | are, especially if any of the YC founders working in this space
       | see this!
        
       | Oarch wrote:
       | I'm so dead do all this generic hype lexicon: unlock,
       | supercharge, revamp, disrupt etc, etc.
        
       | exasperaited wrote:
       | Everything about this, and I mean everything, makes me want to
       | vomit.
       | 
       | I'm so glad we're all in this Faustian nightmare together,
       | because as it all goes wrong we'll have a clear incentive to band
       | together and help each other, right? Just like a lot of little
       | Fausts would do.
        
       | jmkni wrote:
       | Tried to run it a couple of times against our website and it
       | failed every time -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
       | dmje wrote:
       | The whole (original) premise of social media was "let's make a
       | more human side of our business so that people can connect with
       | us". Now we've come full circle where the robots are making all
       | the social content and increasingly the robots are the ones
       | consuming it too.
       | 
       | Weird, uncanny valley times. And, FWIW, not times I want anything
       | to do with, hence why I've been off all social media for years
       | now...
        
         | rgblambda wrote:
         | Hacker News is social media too.
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | I'd rather spend $50 on Fiverr and get human generated content.
        
       | Aldipower wrote:
       | It really does not help me as a small business if Pomelli creates
       | (shitty) AI content, but does not open the gates to actually
       | reach people/customers.
       | 
       | From the article: "..like your social media, your site and your
       | ads..."
       | 
       | I failed with my platform in the sense of online marketing.
       | Although the platform itself did not fail, it has a solid user-
       | base, but not enough reach to make a living from it.
       | 
       | Why did I fail from a marketing perspective? Because my social
       | media, blog, ad words, etc. all do not have enough reach! The
       | human made content itself is good and never was the problem.
       | Reach it is!
       | 
       | This tool would not solve my problems.
        
         | neom wrote:
         | Do you know how reach happens though? Because if you don't, I
         | suppose you wouldn't know if this tool was appropriate or not?
         | (not saying that to be rude btw, just sayin!)
        
           | Aldipower wrote:
           | This tool is a content generator. It does not create reach.
           | So I think I do not get your question? If you read the
           | Pomelli article it states in the first sentences that Pomelli
           | will help small businesses by creating campaigns. "Pomelli is
           | an AI marketing tool designed to help SMBs more easily
           | generate scalable, on-brand social media campaigns to help
           | grow their businesses." But my point is, those campaigns are
           | useless, if you do not have reach already. So, Pomelli does
           | actually not help small business as they are stating, but
           | instead is wasting your time and money, because you will end
           | up in buying some ad words from Google.
        
             | neom wrote:
             | Content is a component of reach.
             | 
             | Reach happens through channel marketing virally, virally
             | typical happens via novelty.
             | 
             | Creative humans can use any tool to execute reach, this
             | particular tool seems it would be a good one for that, in
             | fact.
        
               | Aldipower wrote:
               | Yes, content is _one_ component of reach, but without
               | reach useless. And good content does not lead
               | automatically to reach. Reach is developed by a lot of
               | factors, channel marketing is also only one _minor_
               | factor of it. This tool does not help significantly with
               | building all of that reputation you need to be trusted
               | and gaining reach. It can't, because it does not create
               | new channels and connections between humans.
        
               | neom wrote:
               | With all due respect, this is simply a tool for creating
               | content, one component of being able to reach people in
               | channels where they consume your novel and interesting
               | messages that both stand out and are shared, such they
               | are aware of your amazing and unique product or service.
               | 
               | It's not correct in business to blame a tool for a lack
               | of creativity, some people are not very creative, those
               | people tend to struggle with reach and therefore their
               | attempt at a business, fails. I built 2 publicly traded
               | businesses this way.
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | The company that is responsible for filling the Internet with
       | junk is just going to help fill the Internet with even junk crap.
       | Who would have thought about that?
        
       | neom wrote:
       | Probably good for mom and pop shops, and super useful for someone
       | who has a couple of restaurant locations or a few small grocery
       | stores. I know a lot of places don't update their IG or whatever
       | with specials for the week or basically anything because it's
       | time and effort, if someone was running a campaign for a week of
       | say a free side with a burger, but wanted to do a different side
       | every day you could pick for free, you could churn stuff like
       | that out super fast with this.
       | 
       | I tried it. I used it first for my stuff and thought wow I'd
       | never use this for my stuff, but my stuff isn't a mom and pop
       | burger joint with the kids working on weekend etc, I will show it
       | to the lady who has the pho shop next door, maybe she will update
       | her IG with her specials more often than "whenever I remember".
        
       | Atomic_Torrfisk wrote:
       | This is just going to breed mistrust, possibly end up hurting
       | businesses. Generally speaking, there are two categories of
       | marketing when it comes to the products I buy.
       | 
       | The first is the quality mass produced products like laptops,
       | cereals, frozen pizzas, etc which have enough revenue that they
       | can hire human marketing to come up with unique content,
       | packaging and ads. The other category, is _high_ quality locally
       | produced goods, like cheese, meats, and some clothing (for
       | example) which do not have enough revenue to hire dedicated
       | marketing staff, but instead use informal marketing. Marketing
       | beyond simple ads in the later case barely matters since there is
       | a lot of trust that the product is quality.
       | 
       | Now there are a lot of garbage products out there, mostly from
       | dollar/discount shops, drop shippers, online shops, and sometimes
       | supermarkets. Margins on these cheap products is usually thin, so
       | if they can save a few bucks with Pomelli they will probably use
       | it.
       | 
       | I'd argue that most people today have become very sensitive and
       | well trained to sniff out poor quality products, its easy to get
       | ripped off. Cues of poor quality could be the design of the
       | packaging including language and fonts, the weight and feel of
       | the product or the brand name when it comes to amazon products
       | sold by Mosptnspg, DSPEAE , Sdarming or whatever lol.
       | 
       | Is the cue to poor quality not going to become Pomelli-style
       | designs? People are already sensitizing themselves to genAI
       | content, and Pomelli is unlikely to produce designs time after
       | time again which are unique enough to bypass a good eye.
        
       | cmoski wrote:
       | I didn't see anywhere on the page the date when they plan to kill
       | the product...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-11-02 23:01 UTC)