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- Demo: Bob the Donkey - The first AI holiday commercial experiment
Demo: Bob the Donkey - The first AI holiday commercial experiment
Exploring AI’s role in advertising production
tl;dr
We took a bold leap into the future of creativity by producing the world's first Christmas advert created solely using AI in 2022. From storylines and scripts to final visual assets and audio, this entire 129-second film was made in just five days, showcasing AI's potential to revolutionize creative processes.
Introducing Bob the Donkey, who wanted to be a reindeer
This year, a unique guest appeared at our Christmas party: Bob, the donkey who dreams of becoming a reindeer. Bob is the star of our AI-generated Christmas advert, a pioneering project born out of Rehab's commitment to innovation and exploring emerging technologies.
During one of our regular Hackweeks, a cross-disciplinary team took on the challenge to create a Christmas advert using only AI tools - an experiment never attempted before. This task wasn't just about producing an advert; it was a deep dive into the capabilities and limitations of AI in creative processes.
How we created it
We started by transforming OpenAI's GPT-3 into a creative director specialising in Christmas ads. This 'creative director' then spun various scripts, and one stood out: a heartwarming tale of Bob, a donkey with big dreams.
The chosen script was fed into text-to-image generators, Midjourney and Dalle-2, to create storyboards. Midjourney produced the initial visuals, and Dalle-2 refined and edited the images. The team iteratively tweaked the visuals until they hit the right note.
To give the advert a human touch, we used Replica Studios for narration and Soundraw for the orchestral arrangement accompanying the voiceover. The result is a captivating film, brought to life entirely by AI.
Our team navigated this uncharted territory of AI creativity with curiosity and tenacity. Many hadn't worked with these AI platforms before, making learning part of the creative journey.
Despite the heavy lifting by AI, humans were integral to the process. Human judgment was key in refining the visuals and overseeing the output throughout the creative journey. However, the pace of the process was considerably faster than traditional methods, and we expect it to be even quicker as we become more familiar with the tools.
Notably, AI has some limitations. It has a fuzzy understanding of IP law and initially leaned heavily on known Christmas movies in the scripts - a route that could lead to copyright complications. This highlighted the crucial role of human supervision in this evolving field.
Discovery: Looping output as input to the AI increases the quality; we call it “Daisy Chain”
As part of the process, our team discovered a way to increase the quality of the creative output dramatically.
To develop the technique, our team copied the output from one AI tool and used that output as the input to another, the results became dramatically better after only two or three loops. This became the cornerstone of the approach that would lead our teams down some exciting paths.
A crucial aspect of our approach was the separation of the design and engineering phases. In the design phase, we employed a fine-tuning and prompt engineering that allowed for rapid AI model prototyping and iterating. This process involved briefing AI with the persona of a creative director and guiding it to generate various scripts.
Once we moved past the design phase, our team ensured robustness and overall alignment with the envisioned output. Including refining AI-generated visuals, integrating human-like narration, and crafting the orchestral arrangement.
Our dual-phase process of design and engineering ensured a perfect blend of creativity and technical precision. The Daisy-Chain process allowed us to create a Christmas advert that is both heartwarming and technologically advanced.
Here’s the final video
What does this mean moving forward?
Our experiment with AI has shown us a glimpse of the future. AI holds the potential to enhance creative ideation, speed up storyboarding, and offer powerful tools for creative teams. Yet, at least for now, humans remain an essential part of the process.
We're excited to share the fruits of our Hackweek, and even more thrilled about the future possibilities this project has opened up. We can't wait to further refine our methodologies, using these learnings to create better solutions for our clients.
With AI-powered creativity, we were able to produce an engaging Christmas advert in a fraction of the time compared to traditional methods. We're pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and we invite you to join us on this exciting journey. Check out our Christmas advert, share your thoughts, and stay tuned for more insights into AI's evolving role in creativity.
After all, who knows what else AI might dream up next Christmas? As we look to the future, we're optimistic about the synergy of human creativity and AI, and how it will continue to redefine what's possible.