AI Briefing: Creative ways companies used AI in advertising in 2023

AI Briefing: Creative ways companies used AI in advertising in 2023

As the generative AI boom took off in early 2023, there were plenty of predictions about how soon — and to what extent — companies would start using generative AI in their marketing. Nearly a year later, it’s clear many are feeling increasingly comfortable.

Here’s just a small sample of how AI helped marketers create compelling content in 2023:

• Orange’s 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup ad supporting the French national team created a deepfake with AI to address sexism in soccer.
• WWF Deutschland used AI for several compelling campaigns. In one, it recorded humming bees and then replayed the sounds into Google’s AI-powered hum-to-search tool to see which real songs the buzzes sounded like. (The result was 750 songs on “Bee Radio,” which then generated ad revenue to fund the WWF’s wild bee fund.)
• In a separate campaign called “Climate Realism,” WWF took famous landscape paintings and recreated them with AI to generate hundreds of images showing what the same landscapes might look like in 2100 based on climate change predictions.
• Burger King’s “A.I.LLOWEEN” campaign used genAI to create a creepy commercial showing deformed people eating deformed burgers.
• Volkswagen used AI to create a deepfake video of the late Brazilian singer Elis Regina shown driving a VW while singing a duet with her daughter, Grammy-winning singer Maria Rita. (The ad also prompted questions around the ethics of the campaign, echoing the the broader existential ethical dilemma facing the industry.)
• One of the earlier brands to make ads with gen AI in 2023 was Coca-Cola, which used generative AI for its Masterpiece commercial and also used it to create a new platform in collaboration with OpenAI.