Former Google executive Marissa Mayer has drawn intense online criticism after revealing that she asked an AI assistant to name three things about her daughter.
The 51-year-old discussed her new technology startup, Dazzle, in an interview with The New York Times . The company is developing AI assistants, and Mayer also described how she has used the technology in her own life.
Mayer said that late last year she found herself struggling to provide her 9-year-old daughter’s teacher with three bullet points explaining what made her child special.
Overwhelmed by the possibilities, she turned to Dazzle for help. The app generated a response within seconds.
Its description of her daughter was: “empathetic, creative and an animal lover.”
The disclosure prompted a wave of backlash on social media. Some critics even called Mayer, whose estimated fortune is $1.4 billion, a bad mother.
“The best case scenario is that this is a lie made up for the article,” one person wrote on X.
Another user posted: “This woman has spent next to no time with her kid. My god.”
A third commenter said: “I hope this is an exaggeration to make for an interesting click-baity article.”
Mayer spoke to The New York Times about Dazzle, her new technology startup focused on developing AI assistants, and explained how she had used the tool herself
Mayer said Dazzle is particularly aimed at busy women, with the company hoping they will embrace AI assistants
“If you can’t think of 3 good things about your kid, you shouldn’t be a parent,” another critic wrote.
Dazzle represents Mayer’s first major move into the AI personal assistant market. The startup analyzes images in users’ camera rolls and uses them to complete tasks or offer suggestions.
Mayer’s vision is for Dazzle to eventually take care of routine problems and everyday tasks that can otherwise become time-consuming or difficult to organize.
“A lot of what excites me is taking something that used to take you hours or minutes, and now getting it done in seconds,” she said.
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She told the newspaper that Dazzle is being designed with busy women in mind, in the hope that they will find an AI assistant useful in managing daily life.
“Women, this is my own bias, tend to take more photos and are more visual, and so being able to work with AI in a visual medium is fun,” Mayer said.
“It essentially understands your personality, your likes, your dislikes, because it knows what you think looks good.”
Mayer said she has already used Dazzle to locate family activities during a trip to Venice, organize a playdate for one of her daughters and choose a theme for her son’s birthday party.
Mayer faced widespread criticism online, with some social media users going so far as to describe her as a bad mother
The tech start up is her first push into the AI personal assistant market, with Dazzle analyzing images in users’ camera rolls to carry out tasks and make suggestions
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Should parents rely on AI to describe their own children, or does this cross a line?
It’s not just organizing things either, she used Dazzle to throw suggestions at her for Halloween costumes, she said.
She hopes that Dazzle could help overburdened women who may have been reluctant to get on the AI bandwagon.
Mayer added: ‘So much of what I see with these assistants, they’re quite technical. There’s definitely a cohort of people, probably more women than men, that are too busy for that, and it’s also extremely jargon loaded and intimidating. So we built Dazzle to be more approachable.’
The move comes at a time amongst women who are running high profile tech companies that are worried there is a gender problem with AI.
According to the outlet, even Anthropic’s own president Daniela Amodei has raised alarms that AI is becoming a ‘tool that’s just for the guys’.
Mayer told the outlet: ‘I think gender balance will come in time, because this is a field that’s moving so quickly. I’m generally an optimist.’
