AI is part of the biggest trends this week, with a new ad around the Women’s Worlds Cup and an AI-generated song from a fake Johnny Cash singing “Barbie Girl” making the rounds just in time for “Barbie.”

Meanwhile, this week, Meta made an advance in large language models by releasing Llama 2, the next iteration of its generative text machine that is akin to ChatGPT. Meta, which owns Facebook, opened Llama 2 to Microsoft and Amazon cloud services, and said the model was trained on 40% more data than the first generation. Apple is developing generative AI products, too, according to Bloomberg News. Apple has been silent about how it plans to incorporate AI into its services while Microsoft invested in ChatGPT, and Google, Meta and Amazon all released AI products. But Apple has an internal project called Ajax, which is being dubbed “Apple GPT,” Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

Aside from technical advances, AI continues to be an experimental technology for advertisers and everyday creators. The public is still getting used to how AI pops up in everyday use, and it’s even become one of the biggest points of contention in the writer and actor strikes in Hollywood. Artists are worried that AI could give Hollywood studios more control over their images, especially when a film can just create actors and scripts with the push of a generative AI button.

This is Ad Age’s latest installment of the top 5 AI marketing activations, which explores all the ways generative AI and machine learning are showing up in advertising.

Heidi, oh no

It’s not a top 5 AI roundup without at least one creepy computer-generated video, and this one is a fake trailer for a “Heidi” movie. The trailer is called “Cursed Heidi” for good reason, and it follows similarly nightmarish videos covered here—"Shaq Shaker Shamillion” and “Pepperoni Hug Spot.” Needless to say, video is not AI’s strong suit, and Hollywood likely can’t outsource work making movie trailers to AI, just yet.

There also is a new AI-generated “South Park” episode, starring venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, which claims to demonstrate how easy it would be for a computer to make its own show. In the AI-scripted episode, the “South Park” boys pitch a deepfake streaming service called Queepi. It could be better than Quibi, at least.

The man in pink

The music industry has concerns about AI, because voice-generated AI can mimic any artist. IP-snatching has been giving the music industry fits; record labels and artists are concerned about how easily AI misuses their work. A YouTube account, There I Ruined It, has been making AI mashups of classic artists covering songs outside their typical genre. Last week, the account posted a Johnny Cash cover of “Barbie Girl,” which was surprisingly good. The “Barbie” movie is one of the most hyped marketing events of the year, so the phony Cash cover was appropriately timed.

More: 'Barbie' represents a new era in entertainment marketing 

Ready Player Me creates an AI friend

Ready Player Me, the avatar platform, rolled out an AI-generated avatar companion called Lifeforms. Lifeforms are powered by ChatGPT and can converse with people in virtual reality. Timmu Tõke, CEO of Ready Player Me, promoted the new technology, which melds Web3 and AI, on his LinkedIn on Tuesday.

In May, Stan Georgiev, head of strategic partnerships at Ready Player Me, talked at Ad Age’s Web3 Marketing Summit about how the avatar platform would soon add more AI features.

Cold-calling AI

A new recording posted online showed the potential of AI-generated sales. The demo came from Air.ai, which claims to be on the brink of unleashing tens of thousands of AI sales reps. In the recording, a humanlike voice contacts a prospective customer to inquire about interest in buying a Tesla car. The conversation almost beats the uncanny valley where a person might not even know it was an AI sales-bot on the other end. There was a debate online about the potential for such technology and what responsibilities marketers will have to disclose to consumers that they are indeed talking to a robot.

Publicis and Orange score an AI twist

Orange France, the telecom giant, created an ad for women’s soccer using AI to flip the script. France-based Publicis Groupe worked on the spot with the help of its AI tech known as Marcel. The ad comes just ahead of FIFA Women’s World Cup this week.

The emotionally intense commercial starts with action shots of what appears to be France’s men’s soccer team. The commercial shows the high style of play and the reaction of the fans. Midway through the commercial, it is revealed that the video was manipulated and all the action on screen was from the women’s team. Publicis used deepfake technology to alter the player's appearances in the first half of the ad and then revealed the true players in the videos.