Creepy big brand experiment shows how far AI art has come

We know that AI image generators have been getting better, producing more realistic and accurate imagery. Now, the repetition of an experiment from a couple of years ago shows just how much.

We reported back in 2022 on a London agency's experiment in which it tried to use of AI image generation to create ads for famous brands. The results were terrifying. Two years on, the same agency has repeated the exercise to see how AI art has improved. The conclusion? It's still terrifying, but perhaps in a different way.

To repeat the experiment, 10 Days and its AI branding studio ADINTELLIGENCE.AI used the same four-word prompts in Midjourney to generate images for the same 10 brands as it did in 2022, from Gucci to KFC. Comparing the results side by side, there's a clear improvement in detail and anatomical accuracy, although the AI-generated images still look... well, like AI.

What first thing that leaps out from the visuals for Nespresso, KFC, Wimbledon, British Airways, Gucci, Ray-Ban, Gymshark, Uber, Colgate, and Brewdog is just how bad the results were in 2022, a time when perhaps we were just impressed that AI could generate anything recognisable at all. In comparison, the present day results verge on the hyperreal but still have a creepy quality to them and still don't resemble anything that's likely to connect with customers in a real campaign. sure, AI can now create a pastiche of vintage-looking posters for British Airways, but compare those to the ingenious simplicity of the acclaimed recent British Airways billboard campaign.

That said, it's also frightening how accurate some of the AI-generated imagery now is. One visual for Wimbledon shows a woman gripping a tennis racket with "near perfect finger spacing," 10 Days notes. Quite a advance compared to the six-fingered hands of he past. It's got to the point where AI art has probably become "good enough" for less demanding brands that don't have high standards of quality control.

The creepy Toys 'R' Us AI video showed how cold and disconnected AI content still feels, and 10 Days suggests that the benefits of the tech are still mainly in how it can support humans in the process of production rather than for generating assets. It highlighted Mercado Libre's ‘Handshake Hunt’ and Orange’s ‘WoMen’s Football,’ which uses deepfake technology to showcase biases around women’s sports. These both won awards at this year’s Cannes Lions.

10 Days says that it's using AI to speed up every stage of their creative process, from concepting and prototyping to production (see the case study section of the Ad Intelligence website).

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“We see exponential growth in AI capability – more accurate, easier to use, and a tool everyone will be using," co-founder George White says. "It will lower barriers into the industry, enabling a new wave of people to be more creative. Anyone who puts their heads in the sand will be left behind. I agree with Elon Musk’s comment at Cannes this year: ‘We will see quite radical changes, even next year, and very radical changes in five years… companies that will succeed in this transition period will be the ones that most effectively use AI.’ The key question is when will AI be able to bring creative originality.”

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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.