The Korean branch of Starbucks used AI to create a marketing campaign, but whoops - this campaign celebrated the May 18th massacre of civilians peacefully protesting a military coup in 1980!
Nobody checked before they launched the ad campaign.
Result: massive protests and boycotts, legal actions against Starbucks, collapse in stock prices, etc.
LinkedIn is annoying, but this article is great, and you can read it without registering:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-national-gift-insult-how-starbucks-korea-destroyed-tz0ve
John Carlos Baez
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2026-06-26 13:34:22 UTC
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2026-06-26 13:34:22 UTCEvent JSON
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