Madison Avenue Is Starting to Love A.I.

New York Times

a day ago

A.I. has come for the commercials.
When Coca-Cola released a holiday commercial with visuals generated entirely by artificial intelligence last year, the use of the technology for a 30-second spot seemed novel. It is quickly becoming commonplace.
Nearly 90 percent of marketers who spent more than $1 million on digital video ads last year are using or have plans to use generative A.I. to create video advertisements, according to an industry report released in July. That can mean using tools to streamline production, but also introducing elements like voice-overs. And A.I. has allowed companies to generate hyper-realistic landscapes, salesman avatars and almost any other visual component.
'The number of different elements that one can change in a piece of creative are almost endless,' said David Cohen, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the trade group that published the report. 'It's impossible to do that with humans. It needs a technological assist.'
Many small and medium-size companies are wholeheartedly embracing the change, because the technology can sharply lower production costs. Big tech companies including Meta and TikTok are encouraging the use of A.I. tools as well, introducing their own technologies to make advertisements.
'The amount of content that is being created today makes what was happening 10 years ago look like child's play,' Mr. Cohen said.
Several years ago, Shuttlerock, a digital creative company, began to experiment with generative A.I. in ways that now seem archaic. The tools available at the time were useful but more time-consuming, and created relatively low-quality images.
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