AI Ads
Content! Woohoo! Yay! More content!
I’ve always loved television ads, well, some television ads. It’s a strange artistic medium, advertisements, because only when they are the best of the best can they even remotely be tolerated. Most ads are just a product on a screen, with music and a nice voiceover. These ads waste your time more than they convince you to buy anything. But when ads are good, when they are really good, they evolve into true art, transforming from something that is simply on a screen into a treasured memory. I love Christmas, and I love the snow, but it’s not winter until I’ve seen a snowman come back in from a storm, find a bowl of Campbell’s soup, take a sip, and have his snowy exterior melt away, finally making him a boy again.
99% of ads are a violent waste of time, and for that, it’s a unique medium. A bad sculpture doesn’t instinctively evoke capitalist horror just on the basis of its existence. Ads theoretically can be adored. Even with the fact that they only exist to sell you products. It’s that quote from Don Draper, “Advertising is based on one thing, happiness… Happiness is a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance, that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are okay.” It’s why people collect Coca-Cola merch, and why I cry every time I hear OneRepublic.
This year’s football ads were quite strange. If you haven’t seen the Svedka, AI-generated vodka ad, you both should and should not watch it. It’s mesmerizingly bad. It’s exactly what you think an AI-generated ad would look like, absolute slop. However, there is method in its madness. It’s absolutely mesmerising. It must be some kind of flaw in the species that I cannot stop thinking of those horrible little robot faces. It’s a great piece of something because I’ve watched it like seven times now, but a terrible ad, because I will never drink vodka from a company that would put that kind of slop out into the world. I’m at least thinking about it, and that surely stands for something in the world of advertising.
I don’t think that it’s “so bad that it’s good,” but it certainly is “so bad, and it’s new.” I’m certain that these AI ads can look better than they actually do. The day of most ads being AI is coming any day now, and they will look better than these nightmare robots. It’s just weird to see something that is wholly unique. I may be stretching the term, but witnessing a new mode of art carries a shock-and-awe factor. I don’t count AI as art, which is why I think I like this ad so much. AI slop isn’t art, it’s a product, it’s a thing, it’s just something that surely does exist.
The fact that it’s a product works for advertising, though. Intellectually and creatively, I always hate when I see a Spike Jonze ad. He is such a talent, and his videos are always incredible, but they are horrible ads. They don’t make me want to buy anything, or tell me what it is that I should even be buying.
This year, he made a Super Bowl ad featuring Ben Stiller and some other bloke. Ben plays a 1970s performance artist/Italian acrobat who, in the ad's fantasy world, is filming a live segment with his brother. In the 1970’s TV show world where the ad takes place, the brothers are singing, dancing, and doing flips—all in an effort to pitch a new feature of Instacart, the online grocery delivery service. Apparently, you can now “Pick your bananas’ ripeness.” Wow. The video itself is immaculately shot, produced, edited, and written (well… the writing isn’t as great, but it’s funny enough). This advertisement, no matter how stupid its sales premise is, is actual art. It took vision to make, and required artistic drive and skills to make it real.
There are still weird things in this ad: I can’t even understand what one of the characters is saying; his voice is so high-pitched, and when it's cut down to a 30-second TV spot, it just sounds like a mess. So much is happening; so much “lore” gets cut from the longer 90-second version, and you are just left shocked and confused. Sometimes art can be so artsy that, even if its artistic intent is to sell you online bananas, no matter how talented the artist is behind it.
You at least immediately know what the point of the Svedka ad is: it’s creepy robots selling Vodka. I’m distracted by the AI nature of it, but in many ways, that makes you pay attention out of disgust. The Spike Jonze Instacart ad, until the credits roll and you see the Instacart logo with clear text that says how Instacart lets you pick your bananas’ ripeness, you have no idea what is going on. It makes sense in the online 90-second version, but it’s an ad— I shouldn’t have to watch the director’s cut of it to get what the product being sold even is.
The reason I’m writing any of this is because of an ad that OpenAI made, which I think is just odd. It’s odd for several reasons. It doesn’t seem to be made by AI, some irony there, but I’m sure it could have been made with a very powerful AI, and I just don’t realise it. Maybe the idea originated from an AI, or it was written by one, edited by one, or something’d by one. My point is that it feels like a traditional ad; it is not attempting to be revolutionary in any direct or aggressive way.
It follows a young boy; it’s shot in first person, so you get to see him raise his hand in class, and his hand is on your screen, like you’re the one doing it. Wow. The story is odd, though, it’s at points in the modern age, and then in the past. You see our kid boot up Linux on an old PC just after he builds a Gameboy-type handheld. There is a weird anime segment where his hands expand; this section was probably made by AI, but then we see him at a chess tournament a few moments after. If it sounds jumbled, trust your instincts; it really is. The kid rides his bike, attends class, reads Isaac Asimov under the covers, and attends a meeting with two Silicon Valley dude-bro-lads.
It comes off as very nostalgic. It’s slow and filled with childhood imagery. The lighting is soft, and there truly is a ton of bike riding in it. The opening shot is a child tracing a spiderweb with his finger. I remember being a kid during the 2000’s tech boom and thinking that Silicon Valley was amazing. My friends watched Apple’s GDC events every year with glee, and freaked out when Samsung put a curved corner on one of their Galaxy phones. We hoped for and anticipated the day when Google would finally release its modular smartphone, and we longed to wear Google Glass, no matter how goofy they looked. I still remember how every one of my friends tried to get their hands on Google Cardboard and wondered what the next big thing would be.
Apple ran those awesome iPod ads with colorful dancing people, and you truly felt like technology not only could make your life better, but also that its intent was to make life cooler. You can listen to your music anytime, anywhere; it was and felt like magic.
I’m not sure when this optimism died out, but it seems like tech nihilism is a universal feeling these days, and rightfully so. What once was a breakthrough is now just another way to keep us fat, stupid, and isolated. I don’t think it’s me aging that has taken my whimsy away, but a change in the companies themselves.
This OpenAI ad feels like it’s in the wrong decade. This would have been perfect alongside that Microsoft ad where the rapper Common talked about progress and power, but the gig is up, guys.
The ad ends with the line “Just Build Things.” Cool. It’s from another time, where Tesla was going to bring jobs back to America while making the Earth a greener place. Sweaty boys in their dorm rooms were going to make connecting with old friends easier. Pizza was going to be freed from its shackles as only being orderable over the telephone, and you would finally be able to order it online (Does anyone remember Slice? Silicon Valley did a whole season making fun of it).
At the end of the day, it’s a really bad ad. It’s not good art either. I have no idea what’s happening in it, what it has to do with the product, and in an effort to evoke the optimistic sensations of tech’s past, it serves more as a grim reminder of our current state of affairs.
The song that plays over it is excellent though, and when I looked up the track name, it turns out it’s the end credits song from “28 Years Later.” The music in this ad is from a film about the end of the world, more importantly, the end of humanity. Cool. What makes this song choice poetic isn’t that it’s from a movie like “28 Years Later”; just another case of AI taking something from someone else and pretending it’s theirs. It’s that, in this case, OpenAI actually paid an artist for their work.
All of this talk of AI and nihilism has got me hungry. I’m not much for bananas, regardless of their ripeness, so if you folks don’t mind, I’ve got some internet pizza to order. “Alexa!”