Part 3: AI in Advertising - From the threat of AI to Nobel Prizes for AI
This month, in Part 1 VML strategic director Antonio Petra gave us a practical guide to using AI to improve how your agency operates with your clients and internally.
In Part 2, Vincent Maher gives seven life-changing AI tools that you should be checking out.
We will round up with Part 3: Key AI in Advertising news and highlights from the past few weeks.
Generative video
The world of generative video is hotting up. Everyone will have seen the announcement from OpenAI about Sora earlier this year. We are yet to see a release date although it is still anticipated it will come out this year (perhaps after the US election).
In the meantime, we have seen a flurry of competitors emerge and some of them are getting really impressive.
Here are three to get you started:
- Runway is perhaps the most compelling, offering full text-to-video capabilities as well as animating still images at a price point that is a fraction of what it would cost to make these videos traditionally. These are true generative videos although limited currently to 10-second clips. (Use this handy GPT to improve your prompts).
- Taking a different approach, invideo offers video generation from a prompt and even produces a soundtrack along with the finished product. However, this tool works by combining existing stock videos rather than generating each frame from scratch.
- Typeframes promises to help you make "viral videos" and focuses more on creating content to be shared on social media.
For those used to the speed and cost of ChatGPT, these tools are a whole different order of pricing and speed since what they are doing is considerably more computing intensive.
Again, compared to the traditional way of making videos, these tools offer a radical view of where we are headed.
For a more detailed look at the state of generative video check here. (We will cover generative video in detail in a future digest).
Nobel Prizes for AI
The Nobel Prizes for Physics and Chemistry were awarded to scientists who employ AI in their work.
The Physics prize went to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, two pioneers in machine learning, and the Chemistry prize to three scientists who used AI to predict and create proteins.
OpenAI valued at $157bn
AI darlings OpenAI was recently valued at $157bn after a new round of funding, demonstrating the continued bets that investors are taking on this technology for the future.
However, they are still losing an impressive amount of money thanks to the extreme computing resources required to deliver their products.
Meta’s Orion augmented reality glasses
Meta announced Orion, their latest foray into augmented reality glasses with embedded AI. Although not (yet) a consumer product, the demos show an impressive application of AI to understanding and annotating the real world and another step toward the dream of a physical computing future.
Upgraded voice assistants
Both Apple and Amazon have upgraded their voice assistants (Siri and Alexa) with AI capabilities.
The new Siri is a part of Apple Intelligence, which is only partially available at the moment, and only on the latest Apple devices, whereas Amazon has partnered with Anthropic to improve Alexa.
Both tools are enormously improved, and the age of the more intelligent voice assistant has arrived.
The dangers of AI taking over the world
And for those worrying about the dangers of AI taking over the world, this interview with Nobel winner Geoffrey Hinton is chilling and essential viewing.
About the ACA
We are the official industry body for advertising agencies and professionals in South Africa, and count most major agencies among our members.
Find out more about the ACA.*ACA Future Industry committee comprises Jarred Cinman, Vincent Maher, Musa Kalenga, Haydn Townsend, Matthew Arnold and Antonio Petra.
