AI-generated ‘ads’ for beer and pizza offer glimpse of the future of film

Creative experiments lead to “machine-learning interpretations” of advertising.

Roland Ellison Interesting Engineering Created: Apr 27, 2023

‘Synthetic Summer’ was produced by Private Island

As the pace of development in AI and Machine Learning continues to accelerate, creative producers have started to release the results of some of their experiments in video using tools like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and ControlNet to produce ad campaigns for imaginary brands.

This week saw the release of two dummy ads, one for an American beer and another for a pizza brand.

The results are impressive and disturbing in equal measure, with a strange aesthetic that looks more like something you’d see in an Aphex Twin music video, than an ad you’d see on TV.

According to Chris Boyle, co-founder of London-based Private Island who produced the ‘Synthetic Summer’ video, it was generated from text prompts.

He told IE: “We’ve been using Stable Diffusion, Control Net and Runway to understand new forms of moving and generative image for the last 12 months – exploring new ways of working and new mediums of visuals powered by Machine Learning”.

“We are creating a series of in-house experiments that help us figure out how these tools can be used in production. Most of our work combines live-action and animation so this kind of stuff seems like a natural evolution.”