Can AI Make the Future More Human?

“People are looking at AI like it’s a replacement for everything. Maybe that’s what it is, if we choose to be cynical about it. But it’s not how I see it”. 

This industry is about to be changed forever. Of course it is. It always is. Ostensibly revolutionary ideas are a dime a dozen in the world of advertising and marketing, and most are met with a disinterested eye-roll followed by a swift departure to the next shiny new thing. Rinse and repeat. In the context of such fleeting changes, cynicism is an all-too-easy reflex.

But AI feels different. 

The explosion of interest we’ve seen in its creative applications is grounded in tangible stuff - real, human experiences. Playing around with tools such as Midjourney or Chat GPT feels like a kind of imperfect liaison with the future, a messy and warped postcard from a different creative universe. It’s a place where in one moment a photorealistic astronaut is dancing with an anime penguin, and in the next, we’re passing a bar exam with an essay we wrote in thirty seconds. It’s the spellbinding Everything Everywhere All At Once made suddenly and terrifyingly real. 

At least, that’s been the experience for those of us getting to grips with AI over the past few months. For others, those who have been prodding at the boundaries of this tech for a number of years now, it makes a great deal more sense. Alt.VFX - and the studio’s brainchild T&DA - is home to plenty of those people and for them, as their executive director Tyrone Estephan explains, cynicism isn’t a realistic response. 

“T&DA are creatives, futurists, and technologists who have been unlocking the customer experience via emerging technologies over the last decade”, explains Tyrone. “The team has also been using AI as a tool and a creative jumping-off point for approximately the last three to four years”. 

AI was integral to the team’s efforts in creating Rekorder-Land for the cider giant Rekorderlig two years ago, and incorporated deep fake technology into an award-winning project for Victoria Police back in 2020. As AI hype has built up momentum over the past year or so, the T&AD team has found themselves perfectly equipped to make practical use of the tech to help their projects to shine. “Being on the front foot has helped create a wide variety of AI-driven creative in the last year from short films, interactive games, AI-generated commercials, AI-enhanced visual effects and pipeline tools all utilising the best of this brave new world”, says Tyrone. 

One such example is the studio’s work for the Japan-based web3 platform aU. An artfully constructed campaign offered a riposte to the idea that AI tools amounted to cutting creative corners; instead being used to help craft a beautiful cyberpunk-esque visual world. 

Above: T&DA’s work for aU leaned on AI to help animate much of the human-made imagery we see on-screen.

“aU has been a really good flex for us to bring some of our experiments to a completed project”, says Tyrone, “but if I'm being honest, the technology is moving so fast that we are in a time where the artistic possibilities and quality available to us is increasing at an exponential rate beyond most people's expectations. Every project we do is another giant leap into the present future”. 

As the executive director goes on to explain, the technology (and, crucially, the culture around it) is already moving at such a pace that projects previously considered impossible or undesirable are now within reach. 

“There was a project we worked on only a year ago for a famous personality which involved a kind of metaverse-version of this person speaking to people in VR”, he recalls. “But it was considered ‘creepy’ given that audiences wouldn’t accept an AI version of this celebrity speaking with them. Fast-forward to today, and I think that project goes ahead a thousand times over. People are much more accustomed to AI and that’s opening up creative opportunities just as much as the technology itself”. 

So, for the team at T&DA, there’s no room for cynicism when it comes to this groundbreaking tech. And yet, Tyrone remains cognisant of AI’s more negative aspects. Specifically, he tells LBB that the technology may soon pose big challenges when it comes to quality control. 

Faster, Cheaper, More?

Almost overnight, the industry has switched from a mindset of what Tyrone describes as “trepidation and fear” towards AI into a kind of gold rush to incorporate it into every project going. “We often seem to be a few years too early with our experiments to bring them to market, and when the market is ready it becomes a rush with subpar rushed work being created at breakneck speeds”, he says. 

For Tyrone, the industry’s approach to quality control is becoming something of a frustration. “Coming from a high-end visual effects, animation, and Oscar-winning film background, it is hard to see the low-rent quality of much of the AI-generated content being made”, he says.  “There have been a few standout things created that look wonderful, but for us personally, we are very keen to hook up our capabilities with the right clients and budgets to create something that is not only of the present future but will also stand the test of time as a work of art or an expression of creativity”. 

It’s at this moment that a potentially critical tension emerges between AI and the pursuit of creative quality. Is the technology a helpful tool that’s set to make life easier for creatively-minded people, or is it a new way to feed the industry’s worst impulses, eschewing integrity and quality for the sake of convenience? 

“The word we’ve constantly got up on the whiteboard at T&DA is ‘polish’”, notes Tyrone. “We’re trying to create good work, not just add to the churn”. 

There’s also something deeper at play. Reflecting on how the industry might respond to the AI revolution, Tyrone casts his mind back a few decades. “When I think about the generation of creatives that came before me, there was a dominant punk undertone to the work - kicking against the rules without caring what anyone thought”, he says. “Today it’s almost the perfect opposite. We’re desperate to know what people think of the work, and we crave ‘liking’ - literally in the case of social media campaigns - and affection. I do think that this contributes to a desire for instant gratification, and to be the one who gets to the market first. And I think there’s a direct correlation between that and subpar results”. 

Despite that insight, however, Tyrone isn’t feeling helpless. Far from it. “To take up the music metaphor, I think it’s a lot like pop music. Maybe 80% of what’s being made is formulaic, syrupy autotune stuff that’s here today and gone tomorrow. But then you’ve got the remaining 20% who are the punks, the ones who still want to break rules, reject conformity, and who ultimately end up producing work which stands the test of time”, he says. “I think AI will be like that, and we need to make sure we’re part of the 20% and not the 80%”. 

Perhaps, ultimately, that's the secret to finding a human future within AI: Be more punk. Whilst the words might sound glib, Tyrone is perfectly sincere. “Ideally I'd hope that we have an open dialogue about the tech, with governments engaging with the technologists, and being able to truly understand what we are discussing without fear or a lack of true knowledge”, he says. “Good luck!”. 

We’re going to need it. Industry revolutions may come and go, but it’s hard to escape a feeling that - this time - there’s so much more at stake.