“It’s ground-breaking… the first time these AI technologies have worked together.”

Adam Donen, Kaleida

Objectives

In the scramble to release a new generation of AI enabled computers Lenovo, whose mission is Technology for All, wanted to be at the vanguard of AI as a force for good. But AI is like a tech wild west. Unregulated, questions around accuracy, ethics and intellectual theft were creating negative conversation.

Lenovo needed to show how generative AI could be used positively - in the eyes of a tech forward generation who rarely considered it.

Strategy/Creative

Just as tech brands are scrambling to deliver AI hardware, agencies are scrambling to deliver AI campaigns. The risk though is they become derivative. We needed to find a Gen Z friendly route in, that had never been done before.

Parents with teenagers know young people live two lives, in the real and digital worlds. They create online personas through gaming and social media, where they can express themselves without judgement.

However, Lenovo’s research* showed a divide between these dual lives creating significant issues. 60% of Gen Z wished they could ‘have difficult conversations with loved ones IRL’, the way they talked freely with online peers. 49% said they ‘only felt comfortable expressing themselves online’, leading to mental health issues like anxiety.

This troubling data gave us our insight.

What if, our creatives asked, we could use AI to create and introduce someone’s digital self to the real life person they really wanted to talk to, but couldn’t? We would use AI to dramatise this divide between worlds and generations, creating a deeply human moment via a simple conversation, drawing attention to its damaging impact on mental health. 

Meet Your Digital Self was born. Unfortunately, the technology required to give a digital avatar the same conversational ability as a human, hadn’t been.

Cracking the Tech

We needed to invent new ways of harnessing the power of AI.

Enter Kaleida, the UK’s most innovative holographic studio, who helped us mash up disparate technologies. Facial recreation AI and vocal clones would create exact replicas of our avatars faces and voices. Persona driven chatbots would scan social media to replicate natural speech patterns and a 200-camera scanning rig would capture body movements in ultra-high 3D.

Finding our Avatars

Then began the process of finding two Gen Z avatars. To use AI to build their personas, they needed a data-rich online footprint. They also had to identify with the tensions of living conflicting lives in the real & digital worlds and be psychologically comfortable coming face to face with themselves (while being filmed) in the most intimate of ways. It was a big ask

Two months; 1,961 submissions; 506 videos and 39 call backs with director Ismail Shallis later, two brave young people were cast.

23-year-old Oscar Jackson-Walsh from Shropshire had struggled with bullying throughout their lives. They created an online persona, Spider, to escape this reality. Oscar described Spider as “the real me” because it allowed them to “project all the things I want to be in real life”.   

Chinatsu, 24, from Tokyo is a plus-sized model, challenging Japanese societal norms but struggling with shyness in-person. Despite her success, she hid her online persona from family, fearing judgment.

Tech partner and avatars? Check. We were finally at the stage to try to pull this idea off. In November 2023, using Lenovo tech, we began capturing Oscar and Chinatsu’s digital ‘blueprint’ to make their online selves seemingly human – mannerisms, movements, speech patterns… their essence distilled into data.  

Then, one memorable February day, Oscar and Chinatsu - and two very important loved ones - joined a crew at Pinewood to meet, for the first time, their digital selves.

After a slight hitch – when Chat GPT’s California servers went awol – Oscar and Chinatsu, in two life-changing moments, stood in front of their digital selves and shyly said ‘hi’. Then, in what was the entire social experiment’s most emotionally charged moment, Oscar introduced their digital self to their Gran, Nunu, who, though supportive and loving, had never truly understood their online identity and passions. For Chinatsu the conversation involved revealing to her mum, Rei, the fact that she was a plus size model. Something she had never shared.

Nunu and Rei asked questions of the digital versions of their loved ones they’d never felt able to ask in real life, breaking down barriers and generating deeper, cross-generational understanding. Emotional to watch and humbling to witness, we captured each encounter in a series of powerful videos. For greater impact we partnered with mental health charity Shout, who provided 24/7 counselling for any young person who needed help starting their own conversations.

Media/Influencer Strategy

A dual conversation strategy drove maximum media coverage, whilst sparking social conversation amongst Gen Z. We engaged conversation starters like Roman Kemp in advance, ensuring major coverage on launch day. We then worked with creators to develop content to reach our audience direct and feed into earned. Interviews with ambassadors and a LadBible partnership drove visibility. Post launch, we pitched interviews with our protagonists, NGOs and Lenovo spokespeople.

Results 

The campaign generated:

·        800+ daily conversations with Shout about mental health  – a 58% increase

·        62K unique views to Shout’s website

·        74K social impressions

·        1850+ global earned pieces (over a month)

·       90% included core messaging

·       91% were standalone features.

·       5m global YouTube views, generating 197m (UK) social impressions

Sarah Kendrick, Clinical Director, Shout said: “The AI innovation in Lenovo’s social experiment shows huge promise as a way in which generations can meet and understand each other.”

This was a first for Lenovo, putting their technology - and faith - to the test.

The brief was about capturing the imagination of a generation that struggles with the disconnect between their real and online worlds. But it proved to be much more than that, demonstrating how Lenovo’s AI technology could be used as potential future therapy.

AI might be the wild west, but Lenovo lassoed a part of it, for good. (999)

*Source: Lenovo SWNS survey research conducted with 5,000 respondents, split evenly across generations.