Dreamforce is obsessed with Albert Einstein’s huge cartoon head

Albert Einstein: Nobel prize-winning physicist, global icon, refugee from Nazi Germany — and now, corporate object.

This week, a cartoonish rendering of the world’s most famous scientist is everywhere at Salesforce’s three-day Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. The tech behemoth has tied its annual flagship event to the newest upgrade of its Einstein artificial intelligence technology, with the over-the-top branding to match.

A massive faux-stone Einstein stands about 25 feet high at the conference’s 4th Street entrance, followed by a two-story-high cartoon Einstein head emblazoned across a Moscone Center wall. Conference attendees step across an Einstein likeness on the pavement, wear an Einstein cartoon on their badges and trundle past Einstein logos on bumper stickers, banners, photo stages and lamppost signs.

Inside, a huge inflated Einstein head floats above a sign that reads, “Now everyone’s an Einstein.” In the belly of the conference building, near a huge arch made to look like Einstein’s wacky white hair, a booth offers attendees the chance to “Einstein Yourself” (basically, get the hair Photoshopped onto their head). Another gives away Einstein cups. At a trivia challenge, a Salesforce representative yells, “You’re all Einstein!”

Under a staircase, there’s a creepily lit cartoon Einstein — hair awry and eyes beady, looking vaguely morose.

Einstein, who died in 1955 and was played by Tom Conti in the recent hit “Oppenheimer,” remains a major cultural force. His scientific ideas — the theory of relativity, mass-energy equivalence and quantum theory of light, to name a few — have had remarkable staying power. Researchers continue to test his theories about space and time over a century after his first publications, and his distinctive hairstyle has become near-synonymous with “genius” in pop culture.

When Einstein died, he bequeathed the rights to his “manuscripts, copyrights, publication rights, royalties … and all other literary property” to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which he co-founded in 1918, according to a Guardian report. The legal concept of a “name and likeness” didn’t exist at the time, the outlet wrote, but the university eventually came to manage both for Einstein (and reap millions of dollars in profits as a result). 

The Guardian reported that license requests go through a panel of experts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Salesforce licenses the use of Einstein’s name for its artificial intelligence offerings through the school, a company representative told SFGATE, but they did not share further details. The university did not immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment. 

Salesforce started using the Einstein name around 2016, when it first launched its artificial intelligence product. The agency that coordinated the Salesforce license with Hebrew University provided reasoning on its website: “By creating a proprietary, animated customer-friendly Einstein character, Salesforce added to the product’s accessibility for its customers, despite its technological sophistication.”

During his opening keynote, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said his company needs to convince the outside world that AI is trustworthy. Salesforce’s approach to AI is notably different than fellow San Francisco-based competitor OpenAI, the company behind the suddenly ubiquitous ChatGPT chatbot. Whereas ChatGPT is branded blandly, incorporating an acronym directly related to technological processes, the Einstein tool is directly tied to a man with whom most people are very familiar. 

The “next generation of Einstein,” as Salesforce is calling its new product, will add user-facing AI technology to the firm’s customer management and sales software. Benioff seems unworried about overusing the name and likeness — in a Tuesday press release, he wrote, “In this new world, everyone can now be an Einstein.”

Einstein’s estate representatives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem couldn’t have known that, seven years later, AI would be the talk of the tech world, and Salesforce would be using its license to plaster San Francisco with cartoon scientists. Still, while the firm and conference may commercialize the Einstein name to the edge of recognition, not everyone can change science forever.

Hear of anything happening at Salesforce or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.