US software giant Salesforce said on Wednesday that it would invest $2.5 billion into Australia over the next five years, which even by its own standards for announcing hyperbolic nonsense is breathtaking.
The company said it would invest the $2.5 billion to support AI innovation, workforce development and sustainability issues.
It did not offer even vague guidance on where and how that $2.5 billion would be spent in Australia. No detail whatsoever.
A kind interpretation of this announcement would be to say that Salesforce is conflating business-as-usual costs with “investment”.
But the reality is that it is quite simply misinformation. Its purpose is to mislead. It is not honest.
It’s hard to believe that it’s even legal to propagate misinformation at this scale. It is literal bullshit that has now infected search results and GenAI queries.
The aim of an announcement like this seems to be to demonstrate good corporate citizenship without actually being a good corporate citizen.
The target audience for this announcement are search engines and AI models.
Salesforce makes a ridiculous, dishonest claim which is published in good faith by useful idiots (and, incredibly, in one story, gets a supporting quote from Industry minister Ed Husic), and suddenly a new truth has been born on the post-truth internet. To be propagated into the future.
To be clear: Salesforce will not be investing $2.5 billion in Australia over the next five years despite what its puffed-up windbags say.
Which is not to say that Salesforce won’t spend $2.5 billion over the next five years in support of selling its products and services.
The rent on that bonfire of the vanities known as Salesforce Tower in Sydney will probably account for $2 billion of that. And soft toy Salesforce merch could make up another couple of hundred million, for all I know.
But the idea that Salesforce will invest $2.5 billion in Australia on AI innovation is simply not true. You can’t even blame the Kool-Aid for this claim.
The messaging is intentional, it has purpose, and it is misleading.
There is a lot of talk about the scourge of misinformation and the dangers it poses. But it’s framed as if the production of misinformation is somehow limited to Russian bot farms or some other dastardly archetype.
But corporate misinformation is pervasion and damaging. It is designed to influence government policymakers and our public servants.
Where Salesforce is clearly investing time and money is on resurrecting its damaged reputation for questionable sales practices in Canberra, particularly in relation to contracts with the National Disability Insurance Agency and inappropriate contact with a Cabinet minister.
When we asked Salesforce for details about where the $2.5 billion would be spent in Australia, we were told the company had “nothing further to share”.
Having provided no detail to start with, the company had no further detail to add.
With search engines now loaded up with misleading rubbish to dish out into the future, it’s mission accomplished. Nothing further to share.
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