The top 5 AI marketing activations to know right now

Artificial intelligence provided advertisers with more cautionary tales in recent weeks, including backlash to Under Armour’s new film that borrowed from the brand’s past iconography to produce a new AI-powered commercial. And last week, there was confusion over a startup AI ad firm that creates deepfakes of influencers, whose images are manipulated to hawk products on social media. The videos take real moments, filmed by influencers, but change their speech to recite brand messages. These AI activations, from major brands to minor creators, are affecting the ad world. Marketers eagerly try new text, image, voice and video AI, but some brands are avoiding the technology. As Ad Age reported last week, more brands are telling agencies to refrain from using their assets to train AI and avoid generative AI in their campaigns. There does appear to be a slowdown in the rollout and adoption of advanced AI systems, too. For instance, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, revealed Sora, the video generator in February, but it is still only available to invited testers. This week, OpenAI showed off a “synthetic voices” tool but promised to take that slowly given the sensitivities around being able to computer-generate people’s voices. On the positive side, Lay’s, the packaged foods brand, ran an experiment with AI-generated voices as part of a campaign in Brazil this month, which shined a light on sexism in sports. That campaign, and more, are part of Ad Age’s AI Creativity Top 5, our running look into the ways AI influences advertising and culture. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here 5. Deepfaked creators This deepfake even fooled the influencer who is featured in the spot. A video showing influencer Ariel Marie ostensibly promoting a cleaning wipe brand caused a stir on social media last week, with onlookers arguing whether the entire video was completely AI-generated. It was not: Marie told Intelligencer that she was paid by AI startup Arcads to film clips of herself in the car, and months later, Arcads manipulated the video to make it appear as if she was speaking glowingly about GetDirty wipes. The voice sounded like a robotic TikTok narration, but the footage was indeed authentic. The video, which never ran as an ad for GetDirty, went viral and could end up benefitting the brand. But it’s unclear if this type of stunt would work the hundredth time consumers see it, or if people just start tuning out after being inundated with uncanny AI product pitches. 4. AI sportscaster This experiment from Lay’s used voice-altering AI to raise awareness about sexism in sports. The star of the spot, sports journalist Elaine Trevisan, confronts trolls online every time she calls a soccer match. With the help of AI, Trevisan broadcast in a more masculine voice to see if the same comments came her way. Lo and behold, the trolls were silent when they heard a man’s voice calling the plays. The AI experiment was produced with the help of the agency AlmapBBDO. This wasn’t the first time a commercial used AI to bring attention to women in sports. Last year, a Women’s World Cup commercial for Orange, the French telecom giant, altered game footage by using AI to swap the sexes of the players. The ad starts showing men making great plays, and then reveals women were the highlight makers all along. 3. AI graphics Silverside AI, a group within the agency Pereira O’Dell, developed an AI tool called Hypnovels that illustrates novels with images, motion and voice technology. Silverside showed off a few titles it transformed with its books-to-graphics generation tool, including “Alice In Wonderland” and “Dracula.” The “Alice in Wonderland” version shows just the first chapter of the book, depicted like a moving graphic novel. Silverside AI sees the tool as a way to promote new books, producing multimedia assets based on the work to attract readers. The AI startups used ChatGPT 4 for the text interpretation; Stable Diffusion for the animated effects; and Eleven Studios for the voiceover work. Read about how AI-powered focus groups are changing advertising 2. OpenAI’s Sora videos Nik Kleverov, chief creative officer of agency Native Foreign, is one of the first ad insiders to get access to Sora AI, OpenAI’s video-generation tool, which soft-launched in February. OpenAI has been keeping this video tool close to the vest, but it has shared some of the output from creative testers, including Kleverov. Last week, Sora AI released new videos, including an AI-generated short film called “Air Head,” which is the story of a person whose head is a balloon. Kleverov’s text-to-video example showed how the AI could create concepts for everything from cars to sneakers to beverage brands. Kleverov is quoted as saying that he views Sora as a way “to visualize concepts and rapidly iterate on creative for brand partners,” according to the LinkedIn post that displayed the work. 1. Under Armour up Last month’s AI ad from Under Armour became a flashpoint in the industry. Under Armour took its proprietary brand assets and used them to create a new commercial with the help of AI. The commercial was directed by Wes Walker through his production company Tool North America, and it starred U.K. boxer Anthony Joshua, or at least an AI-generated version of Joshua. Some of the beats in the spot were inspired by the work of past creatives who worked for Under Armour, and that set off a debate about who should get credit. The commercial, however, captured an emotional resonance despite its AI. “You can fight, or you can fade,” Johnson’s AI-generated voice says at one point, with the boxer depicted as a towering stone titan. The backlash to the commercial though, among the online chatter class, was based on a “mob mentality,” Walker told Ad Age last month. Tool released an explainer video about how the ad was created to clear up any “misconception,” Ad Age’s Creativity editor Tim Nudd reported. “Tell me a director who hasn’t typed stuff into Midjourney and put it in their treatments at this point,” Walked told Nudd. “It’s like, guys, we’re all experimenting. We’re all trying to find ways to incorporate this and create value for our creative process, as well as for our clients.” Also read: Ad execs debate AI’s role in advertising

The top 5 AI marketing activations to know right now

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