Meta’s new AI ad runs into a soundtrack problem
Meta released a 45-second AI brand ad, “The Future Is for Everyone,” on July 23, with Mark Zuckerberg posting it himself. The ad starts in black and white with alarmist AI headlines flashing across an eye, then turns to color as it shows couples dancing on rooftops, teenagers swimming in a lake, and friends embracing. The voiceover rejects the idea that AI will leave people behind or make them less connected, and closes with a simple line: “The future is for everyone.”
The issue was the music. Meta chose David Bowie’s 1972 song “Five Years,” a track centered on humanity learning that Earth will be destroyed in five years after a large-scale extinction event. That contrast landed immediately with online critics: an ad selling AI optimism was backed by a song tied to civilizational collapse.
The opening sequence of the commercial presents AI panic in stark black and white. A narrator says, “Some people want you to believe that AI will make us less close, that it will leave us behind. We disagree completely.” The visual tone then changes. The ad shifts into warm, saturated scenes of connection and leisure, all framed as Instagram posts.
The closing voiceover says: “Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever you want. But we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”
The song’s original premise is not subtle
“Five Years” was recorded in November 1971 at Trident Studios in London and released on June 16, 1972, as the opening track on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Its premise is that Earth has only five years left because natural resources have been exhausted.
David Bowie described it plainly in a 1973 interview with Rolling Stone: “It has been announced that the world will end because of shortage of natural resources.”
The section used in Meta’s ad focuses on the repeated word “people,” which can sound, in isolation, like a statement about human connection. But the lines just before it are about a newsreader breaking down while announcing that the planet is dying and that only five years remain. That context is what turned the soundtrack choice into the center of the debate.
Meta says Bowie saw the song as optimistic
In response to the criticism, a Meta spokesperson told media outlets that Bowie himself saw “Five Years” as a song about “being optimistic about the future.”
Bowie’s estate has not issued a public response. According to the input material, the estate sold his publishing catalog to Warner Chappell Music for more than $250 million in January 2022. The deal covered 26 studio albums released during his lifetime, including Ziggy Stardust, which means licensing decisions may not have rested directly with his family.
Reaction on X was swift. Rachel Karten, who writes a newsletter focused on social media work, posted: “meta’s AI optimism ad is scored to David Bowie’s ‘Five Years,’ a song about the world ending in five years in an apocalyptic disaster.” Tech commentator Louis Anslow asked: “Is this a smart way to get AI opponents to help spread the ad?”
Meta’s optimism pitch sits on top of a much larger AI spend
Meta Chief Marketing Officer Denise Moreno explained the thinking behind the campaign this way: “With so much noise, it’s easy to feel like the future is headed toward less connection and less agency. We take a different view. We think AI will empower people to do more of what they love.”
That message runs into a public mood that remains cautious. Pew Research Center found that only 16% of Americans believe AI will have a positive effect on society over the next 20 years, while 40% expect a negative effect.
The ad also arrives as Meta keeps increasing the scale of its AI investment. The company raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $125 billion to $145 billion, up from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion. Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said the increase reflects “higher investment to support Meta Superintelligence Labs and core business.” For comparison, Meta’s full-year capital expenditure in 2024 was $72.2 billion.
The timing adds to the scrutiny
The release also came after other AI-related missteps. On July 7, Instagram rolled out its Muse Image feature, which allowed image generation based on other people’s public photos and was turned on by default. SAG-AFTRA and several actors protested, arguing that people could be turned into non-consensual digital doubles. Meta pulled the feature within days and said it had “missed the mark.”
Then on July 9, Anthropic’s own brand film was mocked for including burning houses, surveillance footage and cemetery imagery. Sam Altman posted on X: “I thought this was satire and kept looking to see if the account was spelled c1audeai.”
As AI keeps provoking strong reactions across social platforms, Meta’s attempt to frame the technology in hopeful terms ended up being discussed for a different reason: the meaning of the song underneath it.
Key points
- Meta released its 45-second AI ad “The Future Is for Everyone” on July 23.
- The ad argues that AI can bring people closer rather than push them apart.
- Its soundtrack is David Bowie’s 1972 song “Five Years.”
- The song’s premise is that Earth has five years left because of resource depletion.
- Meta says Bowie himself considered the track optimistic.
- Meta has raised 2026 capex guidance to $125 billion to $145 billion.