Dear friends,
You are, of course, always in charge of your own careers and your choices. I am not one of those fans who think they should boss you around and tell you what to do.
At the same time I have always tried to tell you what I think and how I feel about all kinds of things, including you and your music and the world at large. And now I need to share with you my deep dismay that you decided to throw your enormous cultural power behind Gemini, with all the damage that AI has done and continues to do to people here in the U.S.
Your actions are hard for me to watch because the way these companies behave in the world and the damage they do is so far from what I’ve always taken to be the values and dreams expressed in your music. But we’ve always been honest with each other, haven’t we? So I will tell you this once, and then let you go on your way.
My first and longest anger comes from the fact that all these programs were built on a great theft. Of my own writing, and of many of my friends who are writers and artists. This is unforgivable, but they don’t even try to atone. These wealthy men believe that everything should be theirs to use, whether they have permission or not.
And in the US at least, these projects have been built on the general destruction of our already damaged environment, soaking up electricity beyond what entire cities and states produce, erasing much of the progress made towards reducing global warming. They seize and destroy vast amounts of water, much of it here in the Western U.S., where we struggle with drought every year.
The enormous data centers AI requires are being built thoughtlessly, mostly on the edges of poor peoples’ neighborhoods, and often near people of color as is always the habit here in the States. They bring constant noise and chemical pollution, and provide very little in return. For reasons like these, data centers have been rejected in many places in the States, in a huge fight that is ongoing even now.
I believe that the people who are pushing these programs so aggressively don’t see others as really human. They certainly show no care or concern for fellow citizens, or for the earth. There may be honest and honorable ways to develop these tools for all of us. I wish we could find those ways, but it’s not what is happening now.
Obviously I won’t follow your lead in using these products. I disable and delete them on every computer and device I have control over. But many, many young people will follow you because we all love you so. And the last thing I need to say is that there are many cases that show the damage these programs do to actual human beings who listen to and trust them. Young people in particular have been led to harm themselves, even into death, by the fantasies and lies that LLMs spew.
I know you often lend your grace to beautiful things that are mostly for rich people. I see such things as more or less harmless and it doesn’t bother me much — rich people are just a part of the world we all live with at the moment. I know that LLMs can be useful to certain people with the skills to handle them (my husband for one example, and my friends who are also senior programmers). To me, that doesn’t mitigate the harms they are causing in the world.
I’m sorry that you are allying yourselves with such forces in human culture. I am even shocked by it, I admit, so I had to write and let you know. If you find that many of your U.S. fans disagree with your take on AI, I hope this can help you understand why.
In sorrow, but still your friend and fan of your music always,
Jennifer
@jnfr
Posted to Weverse BTS forum, 8-6-2026
Reference: Advertisement for Gemini on Instagram, with BTS
Edit to add: Even more disturbing, this ad using the ARIRANG logo on the Sphere in Las Vegas.
