LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 01: Adidas branding is put in place inside the stadium as part of the Arsenal ... [+]
On Monday, Adidas started a social media campaign on Twitter aimed at promoting its new Arsenal jersey. Twitter users who tweeted #DareToCreate or liked the company's promotional tweets would receive an AI automated reply from the Adidas' account with photos of Arsenal jerseys customized with their Twitter handle on the back along with a link of where to buy them.
Unfortunately, the campaign was hijacked within a day of its initial launch by users changing their account handle to broadcast racist, Semitic, and abusive content. The Adidas' account quickly found itself tweeting out handles like "@GasAllJews," "DieAllN****rs," "@InnocentHitler," and "@96wasnotenough" to its over 800,000 followers along with the message: "This is home. Welcome to the squad" and photos of the customized jerseys with the link to buy them. The last handle refers to a British tragedy in which 96 soccer fans were fatally crushed inside a stadium at the FA Cup semi-final in 1989.
Adidas and Arsenal quickly moved to rectify the situation. Arsenal said that the messages had "no place in our game or society" and reaffirmed their commitment to diversity and inclusion. Adidas immediately ended the campaign after the problem was brought to its attention, although screenshots remain. Its Twitter team also launched an investigation, seemingly placing the blame on the platform rather than the German sportswear company's lack of foresight to filter offensive Twitter handles, despite AI abuse being well-documented on the platform.
"Due to a small minority creating offensive versions of this, we have immediately turned off the functionality. We are in contact with Twitter, the innovation provider, to establish the cause and ensure they continue to monitor and action violating content as a matter of urgency.”
Users abusing Adidas' Arsenal campaign to spread hateful messages is part of a trend of Twitter users hijacking AI and social media campaigns. The NFL Patriots had a similar problem in 2014. Coke's "GIF the Feeling" and Nutella's personalized jar labels resulted in users using the campaigns to promote things as random and off-color as an "i'm into feet" Coca-Cola gif to the more hateful "hitler" Nutella jars. The risks of unchecked social media marketing have also dominated British news. A 2017 campaign by Walkers chips had brand ambassador and soccer star Gary Lineker holding up the profile pictures of Twitter users. This led to Twitter users changing their profile pictures to photos of Osama Bin Laden, Stalin, and Fred West, a serial killer.
There is also the most well-known corruption of AI online, Microsoft's Tay, a Twitter chatbot with the purpose of engaging in "casual and playful conversation." In less than 24 hours, some Twitter "trolls" taught the bot to repeat various offensive phrases about the Holocaust, feminism, and race. This forced Microsoft to shut the bot down only 16 hours after its launch and replace it with the politically-correct-to-a-fault Zo.
Despite the multitude of AI and social media campaigns gone wrong, the hijacked Arsenal campaign and Twitter's dark side truly seems to have taken Adidas by surprise. Hopefully, companies contemplating a similar campaign on social media learn from the mistakes of the newest scandal caused by the unfiltered use of AI and consumer engagement in social media.
