A still from Pika Labs' announcement of Pika 1.5.
This is the third installment of a new series exploring the ways agencies are experimenting with AI. Are you using an interesting product that’s not listed here? Send an email to [email protected] for consideration.
From ad automation to moderating interviews with consumers, advertising agencies are turning to AI to support their various needs.
Here are nine AI tools agencies are experimenting with right now, as well as a video explaining how they work.
Adobe’s AI-powered Generative Fill tool, which allows users to edit images in various ways, is perhaps one of the more recognizable tools on this list. It’s quickly become essential for designers, according to Toby Barlow, CEO of indie agency Lafayette American.
Many shops are building their own tools to help manage the more mundane tasks of pitches, but there are plenty of publicly accessible products catching agencies’ attention. Quad is using the AI workspace platform Cassidy to help with responses to request for proposals, according to a spokesperson.
ComfyUI is a web-based interface that works with text-to-image AI model Stable Diffusion, as well as Black Forest Labs’ Flux 1 AI model, to better help users generate and edit images.
Agencies such as Anomaly, Goodby Silverstein & Partners and SpecialGuestX are experimenting with ComfyUI, which recently released ComfyUI V1, a desktop application.
Also read: Top 5 AI marketing activations
Creatopy is a platform that automates ad creation using AI. Lafayette American told Ad Age that Creatopy’s web banner maker, which allows users to customize animations in their designs, is especially useful. Below, a video of Creatopy’s “Advanced Animations.”
“This site probably does the work of 10 people at a bigger agency,” said Barlow, helping “go toe to toe with all the holding company goliaths.”
Flim, which bills itself as the “search engine for creative people,” is essentially a massive database of video cuts and stills.
Boston shop Colossus is using Flim to “sort through hundreds of thousands of clips from films, TV shows and other ads,” said Tyler Sugg, a creative technologist and art director at the agency.
The platform, which is now developing a new suite of AI tools, allows “clients to better understand your vision through cleaner, more cinematic examples,” Sugg said.
Focaldata is an “AI coworker” designed to help organizations conduct research, collect data and analyze results.
Cheil Worldwide agency McKinney uses Focaldata to moderate interviews with consumers and test its creative ideas during pitches.
Kive is an AI-powered platform aimed at helping creatives organize, create and share images and videos. The platform is particularly useful for mood boards and image organization, said Colossus Executive Creative Director and Co-Founder Travis Robertson.
Wieden+Kennedy, Droga5 and Forsman & Bodenfors have also used Kive, according to the company’s website.
Much like other AI platforms, Krea offers a slew of different features, including video generation. Anomaly finds the company’s “Realtime” editor tool particularly helpful, said Chris Neff, global head of emerging technology at the Stagwell agency.
Krea recently made Black Forest Labs’ Flux 1 AI model available to use in Realtime.
There’s no shortage of text-to-video generative AI tools. San Francisco-based studio Bonfire Labs shared that it’s using Pika Labs, which competes against tools such as OpenAI’s Sora and Runway.
Last month, the startup debuted Pika 1.5, which offers “more realistic movement,” among other new features.
