Lights, Camera, AI: Revolutionizing Celebrity Ads
I came across this ad in a magazine in my hotel room yesterday, and it caught my imagination in terms of the future of AI celebrities.
Many articles about AI focus on how easily people might be replaced by AI, for example models.
In this case, as I looked at the images of Pierce and Paris, I imagined a different scenario. The images are certainly striking, since they are a great father/son pair - but I felt they were a little bit staged and stiff. Like they didn't really want to be there.
So I imagined, what if the shoot were created by generative AI? The Brosnans could have reduced their fee by 50%, and been paid for granting a licence to let AI generate their likeness in a campaign.
The end result? Pierce and Paris get 50% of the fee, for 0% of the work. They still get to make a lot of money, but are free to be doing whatever they would rather be with the time they would have spent.
Paul&Shark save 50% on the celebrity costs, plus the majority of costs for the shoot. They still pay for someone to develop and execute the concept using AI - but that will also be a huge saving on doing it the traditional way.
The audience gets to see possibly a more entertaining campaign, which may perform even better than the original - and it could be tested beforehand - with multiple variations at little incremental cost. Even in execution there could many different highly targeted versions of the imagery.
The celebs win, the brand wins, the audience wins - and an agency gets paid for conceiving, crafting and managing an innovative and beautiful AI campaign.
But who will be the agency in question? Will that be one of the existing agencies, who have pivoted fast enough to be at the forefront of this technology? Or will it be one of a new breed of 'born AI' agencies, fast, nimble, small, with incredibly low overheads?
And what of the photographers, the production company, the re-touchers?
One thing is for sure. Based on how far genAI has come in the last 12 months, I would be surprised if many brands are still making campaigns the traditional way by 2025.
