Novig’s Sydney Ad or AI: What’s Actually Worse for Children?
The bus shelter outside my daughter’s school has had a Novig ad up for three weeks now. It’s bright green, with the word NOVIG in big white letters and a line underneath: “A fair bet for Sydney.” My daughter noticed it before I did. She pointed and said, “That’s the app Year 6 boys use to gamble.”
I looked at the ad. It could have been for a gym membership or a smoothie brand. The only hint was the small disclaimer at the bottom, the one every adult pretends not to see. A kid in a navy school uniform walked past and said to his friend, “Bro, there’s no vig. You only pay if you win.” His friend nodded like that made it safe.
I didn’t know whether to talk about the ad or talk about the word “vig.” So I said, “What do you think they mean by fair?” My daughter shrugged. “They don’t take a cut. So it’s fair.” That was when I realised the ad wasn’t just selling betting. It was selling a version of fairness that only exists in marketing.
Later that week, another parent, Maria, caught me at the school gate. Her son had used an AI chatbot to write his history assignment. She showed me the screenshot. The essay was coherent, confident, and completely vague. “Which is worse for kids,” she asked, “this Novig thing or AI?”
I’ve been thinking about that question ever since.
The Novig ad is worse in one obvious way. It’s a gateway. It uses the language of “no cut” and “fair bet” to make gambling sound like a hack, a way to beat the system. Kids are naturally obsessed with fairness. A betting exchange that says it doesn’t take a cut taps into something very real. My daughter already knew the ad’s pitch before I explained it. She had absorbed it in wait time at the bus stop. That’s how advertising works now. You don’t have to read a manual; you just need to stand in the wrong place long enough.
But AI is worse in a different way. The Novig ad is still a billboard. It speaks to everyone, but it doesn’t talk back. AI is personal. When a twelve-year-old asks a chatbot to write an essay, the chatbot responds directly, like an assistant who never gets tired, never judges, and never says “maybe do your own work.” That is compelling. It’s also dangerous because it treats confidence as truth.
My daughter has used ChatGPT twice, as far as I know. The first time was to brainstorm a creative story. The second time, she used it to explain a science concept she’d missed. Both times, the answer was smooth and structured. But when I asked her to show me where it got the information, she went quiet. “It just knows,” she said. No, I told her, it predicts. She looked at me like I had broken the magic.
That moment gave us a rule: AI answers are starting points, not final points. If she wants to use an AI, she has to verify one thing in the answer before she uses it. She can check a fact, a date, or even a quote. If she can’t find proof, she doesn’t use it. It sounds simple, but it has changed how she reads. She started noticing that the chatbot sometimes sounds exactly as confident when it’s wrong as when it’s right.
Now she says, “It guess-talks.” That is a phrase I wish every kid knew.
The Novig ad needed a different approach. I couldn’t just ask my daughter to verify “fair bet.” It’s not a fact she can check; it’s a feeling. So we did a small experiment. I printed a photo of the ad and asked her to rewrite the tagline the way a gambling company really thinks about it. She wrote: “A fair bet for Sydney. But you’ll probably lose.” It was more honest than the original. Then she wrote: “If you see this, your phone is watching you.” That was less accurate but more alarmed than she needed to be. Still, the point landed. She stopped seeing the ad as friendly and started seeing it as a message someone paid a lot of money to make.
The hardest part is that both things are teaching the same lesson: trust the shortcut. The ad says, betting is fair, skip the worry. The AI says, thinking is slow, let me do it. Together, they make a powerful pair. A child who learns to trust a chatbot’s confidence and an ad’s promise is a child who hasn’t been given enough chances to be wrong.
What can a regular parent do? Not ban things. That doesn’t work, and it makes both the ad and the AI more interesting. Instead, I’ve started asking two questions out loud whenever I see something my daughter might not question:
What are they selling? Not just the product. The feeling. The Novig ad sells the feeling of fairness. The AI sells the feeling of certainty.
What’s missing? The ad leaves out the fact that most people who gamble lose money. The AI leaves out the fact that it can make things up. Once you name what’s missing, the spell breaks.
I don’t know which of the two is worse. I lean toward the ad because gambling can take a real chunk of your life and money. But AI worries me more because it’s everywhere and it’s invisible. The bus shelter ad will be replaced by something else in a month. The chatbot will be with her for the rest of her life.
Yesterday, on the way to school, my daughter glanced at the Novig ad and said, “Still a fair bet. If you’re the guy who owns the app.” She laughed. I laughed too. Then she said, “Can I use your phone to ask AI what a vig actually is?” I gave it to her. She read the answer out loud, looked sceptical, and said, “I’ll check that in the dictionary later.”
It wasn’t a perfect ending. She’s still curious about the app, and she still likes using AI more than she lets on. But she’s beginning to ask the question every ad and every algorithm would rather she didn’t: says who?
I don’t have a verdict. I just know that both things need a parent standing nearby, asking one annoying question at a time.
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