Homelessness in Ireland’s capital has reached a record peak. Nearly 9,000 people, including families and children are homeless in Dublin. So Dublin Simon used the latest technology to hijack the conversation to draw attention to an all too familiar problem and created Ireland’s first brand film made using artificial intelligence.

UNFAIR CITY is a real story of homeless created using AI. It tells the story of Justin Cannon. Formerly homeless, Justin now advocates and volunteers for Dublin Simon. Justin was interviewed and his story was animated using AI image generators. The imagery was created by Justin’s own words realised in watercolours and vivid transitions.

One of the difficulties of telling stories of homelessness is that it can be very exposing for Dublin Simon’s clients. Reliving traumatic moments in front of cameras, lights, and microphones can make them feel very vulnerable. The great benefit of using AI in this instance is that it allowed Justin to tell his story on his own terms in a way that was still visually engaging and evocative. In this sense the use of voice driven AI helped to maintain his humanity and dignity.

Although the images were created with AI using tools such as Midjourney and Disco Diffusion, this was still an artist led piece – with director Diogo Kalil, illustrator Vini Bustamante, and composer Mairena Julius guiding the narrative and shaping the film.

This project was born out of a desire to find new ways of highlighting Dublin’s homelessness crisis and the growing inequality in our city. This problem has been getting steadily worse every year and people are becoming desensitised to stories about it. It has become easy for people to ignore it and difficult for the media to cover it.

Traditionally, Dublin Simon’s donor base has over indexed on middle aged and older Dubliners. This means that as the homeless crisis has worsened, their donor base has declined. We needed a way of reaching that younger audience to increase their donor base, to encourage them to help make Dublin Fair, and urgently raise funds for the city’s most vulnerable people. Artificial Intelligence is one of the most contentious and exciting areas of technology, and was very much the hot topic of the day. It was going to be our trojan horse to get both the media and this new audience to engage with the homelessness crisis.

So on the eve of the government vote to lift the eviction ban, the campaign was launched on Dublin Simon’s channels. Within hours it featured on RTÉ, The Irish Independent and Newstalk, as well as dozens of other national and international publishers, radio stations, newspapers and blogs including: Dublin Live, Sunshine FM, Adforum, Adworld, Animation Magazine, David Review, Little Black Book, Shots, The Drum, Creative Salon, Luerzers Archive, Marketing Beat, Marketing Magazine, News Break, Tech Central, IMJ, Virgin Media, Stash Media, BestadsonTV, Creative Moment, Club de Criacao, The Stable, Marketing Beat, Adsoftheworld and more.

The film had an immediate impact for Dublin Simon, generated an 259% increase in donations during the campaign with a 55% increase in new donors aged 18-34*. It reached far beyond our intended Dublin audience – with 25.4 million impressions**, in a city with a population of just 1.2 million, and no media spend.

* Source: Dublin Simon Internal.

** Source: Coveragebook and Similarweb Reports, 4/4/23.