Google progresses beyond poo balloons and gluey pizza into AI-generated social media marketing.
On October 28, 2025 Google Labs announced the release of Pomelli, an AI experiment that they bill as helping SMBs easily generate social media campaigns. Allegedly these campaigns are scalable and on-brand. So, the [insert your salary here] question, will Pomelli take your job?
Short answer, no.
Slightly longer answer: no, for reasons akin to why discarded paper bags haven’t managed to displace clothing.
Google’s announcement post states that, “Creating impactful, on-brand content can often require significant investment in time, budget, and design expertise.” After looking at Pomelli’s output you have to agree with that statement. About the only part of Google’s announcement that isn’t a case of your fast food order not resembling the ad, is that Pomelli genuinely does let users “easily generate”… something.
Using Pomelli Is as Easy as 1-2-3
Step 1. Enter your website’s address so that Google can scrape everything, including your web font files, and regurgitate it as your “Business DNA”. It also sticks all the images on your site into a media library of sorts. In fairness to Google, they’ve already scraped every shred of content and asset off your site a thousand times over to feed to their AI. Now they’re giving you an opportunity to use that regurgitate for more than being permitted to continue appearing in Google search results. All at no additional cost to you.
Step 2. Pick one of the AI-generated campaign directions, which are all practically the same. Or, make more work for yourself and enter a prompt to generate a campaign that is nearly indistinguishable from the ones where AI got to pick its own adventure.
Step 3. Make it easy on yourself and download your newly minted AI slop. Optionally, make more work for yourself by regenerating the slop in an attempt to fix it. Then download it.
Pomelli’s Output Quality Leaves a Lot to Be Desired
Nothing says you’re a business that actually exists like this bizarre, backwards tablet levitating on a man’s lap. Perhaps Google’s AI was channeling Magritte; every time the man tries to look at his screen he can only view the back of his tablet.
Picking an image of printed collateral off the website is a great choice to pair with copy about websites. Did I mention that Pomelli scrapes everything off your site and remixes it with its generated slop?
Marketing your business with out of context images scraped from your blog that may contain other organizations’ logos is sure to net more customers. I know when I want to buy something I’m swayed by random photos of the company Christmas party, logos for other brands, and that PNG of decorative trim on the sidebar. (What is up with the alignment of the text? No I didn’t crop the right side of the image.)
What even is this copy?
Is this supposed to be a promotion for a pulpy novel? Maybe a TV show? Maybe it’s for a security company or bullet proof glass? No, apparently AI decided that this is how digital agency services are marketed. Note that we don’t have an image or copy even remotely like this anywhere on the website. How on-brand of it.
Why the weird white border around the image? What is with the text alignment? Why does Google’s bit bot keep using a font we never use in all caps, in all caps?
Pomelli’s Outputs Are Off-Brand and Off-Putting
One of the best things about Pomelli’s outputs is that they’re so off-brand and inconsistent nobody will realize it’s your business. Though people might think your social media accounts got hacked and started spewing spam.
These look like they’re all from the same company, don’t they?
Honestly, I’m still baffled why the AI decided that a website that’s overwhelmingly light-colored backgrounds with dark text means it should generate all dark backgrounds with white text. That’s not even getting into any of the finer points of how our brand looks.
Features, or the Lack Thereof
Yes, I realize this AI slop tool is aimed at users with no clue how to operate real design programs. Consequently, it will be lacking in features to ensure it’s usable by the target audience. But the fact that it only generates images in 1080×1920 is really not excusable.
Nothing says scalable social media campaign like no Instagram squares.
Who is Pomelli For?
I suppose Pomelli is for whatever imaginary idea of SMBs people at the Alphabet corporation had. Any SMB with enough money to have a website that’s not littered with runs of template placeholder text and something resembling branding, needs and can afford better social media marketing than this.
I don’t think Pomelli has value for new micro-businesses or side hustles either. Releasing a barrage of spammy AI slop is more likely to hurt a new business than help.
Maybe Pomelli is for people who find work slop entertaining.
Where Do I Try This Technological Leap Into the Future?
Those of you in anglophone Canada, United States, New Zealand, and Australia can give it a whirl at https://labs.google.com/pomelli/about/.
What’s With the Incongruous Image at the Top of the Post?
That was what popped into my head when I read the name “Pomelli”. Everything about the Pomelli experience was incongruous, so why start this post with an attempt at congruity?
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