Originally posted on my Patreon here
UPDATE, March 4: This story continues here.
If you've visited Facebook recently, you may have noticed new official ads for Second Life which incorporate video and images that are AI-generated. (And at least in one case, uses an Adobe Stock image.)
After seeing complaints about this from SL creators on social media on Wednesday night (see some samples below), I reached out to Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager, who spoke with me while standing in the rain outside his Boston hotel during a family trip.
As we spoke, it quickly became clear to me that this was probably an honest mistake — and clear to Oberwager how upsetting this ad campaign might be to many in the SL community.
These are not official ads for Second Life, he explained, but only A/B tests using mock-up ads, created in preparation for the eventual, actual, official Second Life advertising campaign — which will, he confirmed with me, only use SL-based content by Second Life creators.
"I'm preparing to spend millions of dollars [promoting Second Life]," as he put it to me. "Until I know what works, every dollar is wasted."
He was actually surprised community members had even seen these A/B tests, because Linden Lab has only spent a very modest amount (i.e. three figures a day) on them.
"We can't guess [on an ad campaign] and hope for the best," he explained. "We're going to run test ads and once we find out what works we'll talk with all the creators", on creating SL-based ads.
"Is it dragons? Is it relationships? We have no idea what works [with SL ads]." He really means it: The ad campaigns they've launched up to now have done nothing to grow the active user base.
But why not just use existing Second Life screenshots and video created by the community for these ads? There's even a promotional clause in Second Life's Terms of Service, granting the company the right to use any user-made content "to advertise, market, and promote [SL]."
On that point, my impression is Linden Lab didn't want to use SLer's content without their permission for an ad. But seeking permission takes quite a lot of time, especially since you technically need to get permission from every single content creator whose work is featured in an image/video, including any creator of the literal sky. (This very dilemma was raised by HarperCollins' lawyers with the cover of my first book!)
"I couldn't test fast enough creating these [ads] in SL", as Oberwager puts it. "I've got to get the best 8-10 messages, then you get the creative."
In other words, he adds: "100% of the actual ads will be Second Life-based. "
So ironically, while apparently trying to be highly respectful of creators' content, Linden Lab went with an approach that's inadvertently made many of them even angrier (see sample below).
In any case, now that the Second Life community has complained about these mock-ups, this A/B test has been halted:
"I've already told the team, stop doing it," Oberwager told me yesterday.
But he takes the blame for these mock-ups going out at all.
Or as Brad Oberwager puts it, saying it loudly enough to startle two old ladies passing by him in Boston:
"I fucked this one up!"
While apologizing to the SL community for this test campaign, he also has a request to Second Life creators:
"Send me videos. Look at these bad ads [we made], and make them better."
Hat tip to SL blogger Alicia Chenaux who wrote on Facebook yesterday:
Dear Second Life - I love you. I've supported you. I've cheered you on for almost 20 years of my life. But y'all know ding dang well that THIS ISN'T AN SL PICTURE.
If it is – IF IT IS – it's so heavily edited with AI, someone coming to SL for the first time will be so disappointed. And it's not, anyway. I found it in the Adobe stock photos.
Please fix. SL is so beautiful in so many ways, there is no need for fake photos to try to draw people in. Stop. Get your marketing person in charge of the sponsored ads to go to Flickr and find artists. There are thousands of photos just in the Second Life Official flickr group! Go to Primfeed and browse! Don't do this. This is lazy.
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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