senckađ
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
Group745
EDITION
Global
USA
UK
AUNZ
CANADA
IRELAND
FRANCE
GERMANY
ASIA
EUROPE
LATAM
MEA
Digital Craft in association withAdobe Firefly
Group745

Experiential Magic: Bringing Gen AI Into the Physical World

18/02/2025
Production Company
Los Angeles, USA
73
Share
Wildlife ECD Scott Friedman on crafting generative AI brand experiences that transform real spaces with a human touch

“How Long till AI makes art that can make us cry?”

That’s the question on the lips of Scott Friedman, ECD at LA-based digital production company, Wildlife. The studio has been working hard in the last four years to put generative AI tools into the hands of creatives, brands and the wider public – even NFL players – hoping to bring gen AI out of the digital world and into the physical.

Working with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Wildlife has developed AI-powered activations for events like CES and AWS re:Invent. These have ranged from custom photo studios to showcases of AI-enabled campaign creation pipelines – all designed to be interacted with in the physical world and show people, and brands, how the tools can bring imagination to life.

“As people realised we could go beyond mixing and matching pre-created content [for customisation], brands wanted to start exploring that. And as the media coverage of AI and its expanding capabilities has been more widespread, brands naturally are looking at ways they can utilise it,” says Scott. “We've been lucky to be at the forefront, getting asked to do a lot of things that have never been done, and finding ways to use new technologies.” 

Wildlife started with text-based AI tools, before AI image generators were available, working with LLMs, chat bots and creating experiments like an AI-powered Spotify playlist generator.

Not long after, the design team started playing with early versions of Midjourney and DALL-E, gaining experience that gave Wildlife a valuable headstart in the space, making them more comfortable with the technology and when navigating brand safety concerns with partners. 

“The first thing on any brand’s mind when they're working with AI is how do we make sure it doesn't go rogue and do those crazy things? So it's been a process over a few years, parlaying our experiences into more ambitious asks as more clients have come to us to see what could be possible.”



One of Wildlife’s first projects testing the generative AI waters was for Lenovo, creating a virtual avatar of musician Queen Latifah that could record personalised video messages for small businesses. Since then, each project has grown their portfolio of AI work and evolved past the limits of the last.

This led to Wildlife eventually teaming up with AWS to bring generative AI into an experiential activation at Cannes Lions, kickstarting something of a specialty for the studio - bringing generative AI into physical spaces – that defined much of their 2024.

The Cannes activation generated portraits of people at the event in the style of classical French painters, partly to fit with the Cannes setting, and partly to let a more stylised image provide some forgiveness to the accuracy of the results. Anticipating and designing around this unpredictability is all part of the process – especially at an event attended by the creative industry, which has high expectations and may be jaded to generative AI.



“We made it more than just what the AI was doing… We would print the images out as a postcard and we presented it with a touchscreen on a big easel,” says Scott. “In a lot of ways, the AI is doing something that would be much too arduous for humans to do on this scale. It takes 30 to 60 seconds to create these really strong images, but otherwise you're sitting for eight hours for a painter to try and do this for you.

“It's an impossible experience that most people will never have, and for which they certainly don't have time to wait in line at Cannes. It’s that ability to scale artistic endeavors that's really exciting.”

Wildlife launched a similar project at AWS re:Invent 2024 called ‘Powered Portraits’, providing a photo studio experience that produced a “super-powered version” of people based on their role at work. Located near the entrance to the venue’s main hall, the activation was designed to be visually “show-stopping” to attract attendees, says Scott, and capture people “in their most powerful light” without altering too much of reality through the AI. This is what Scott refers to as “the AI glow-up”.



“A lot of what we worked on there was retaining people’s outfits, not going too far towards reinterpretation… It’s that connection of seeing it's still yourself, but with this special treatment – like a new location as the background.

“We had multiple stations, but people were really excited to take the time and check it out. People seeing the results their friends were getting drove people to want to wait and stick it out in line, and we got great feedback and results.”

A challenge for Wildlife can be balancing the time needed for the AI processes to work, and often for physical souvenirs to be printed and distributed, with people’s patience and attention spans.

“More involved prompt and generative pipelines just take longer… How long is someone going to want to stand in front of a screen looking at a spinning loader before they walk away?” 



Scott says this is where human psychology from a UX perspective comes into play. The key is to keep people entertained and engaged even while they're waiting, ensuring they feel the time was valuable.

“It's a lot of those classic entertainment and performance concepts – the idea of the magician distracting you with one hand, or telling a story as they’re getting the next trick ready, hiding the dove under their hat. So we think about engagement throughout, making it a fun experience from end to end, and making the wait as short and as painless as possible while still giving the technology time to generate great results.”

This philosophy was central to Wildlife’s activations for the brand Retail at AWS re:Invent and the National Retail Federation show last year. The experience used physical facades of buildings, billboards, computer screens and other ad spaces to showcase how AI-powered AWS technologies could create a whole campaign that encompassed the entire consumer journey.



Attendees could use a touchscreen to customise the product being advertised and different attributes of the marketing brief – the kind of product, what message they want to send, and what audience they’re targeting. The AI system took these inputs and displayed a cohesive ad campaign across the various touchpoints within the physical diorama.

“It was all really eye-catching to draw people into this experience and make sure that we're presenting what could be a very technical showcase as something a little bit more fun and engaging – easy to dive into. The warmth and the human touch of these hand-crafted models help visualise how this [technology] could come to play in people's everyday lives.

“It’s fun to craft that kind of thing and bring those little artistic touches,” adds Scott. “And tying that together with unusual screen sizes – the physical blending with the digital – always has a special feeling to it. We're all in front of the typical screen so much, but to see analogue elements injected into that stuff, we've always seen really positive results.”



Even when working with such highly technical digital processes, it’s evident that providing a tactile, physical experience is key for Wildlife when bringing generative AI into the real world.

This remained true at CES earlier this year, and with the team’s Sticker Studio activation for AWS. “The goal was really just to create a fun use case to show the power of generative AI and give people fun stickers to decorate their personal items with,” explains Scott. 

Themed around the automotive industry, CES-goers could prompt for personalised stickers in a unique visual style, which were then printed out for them to take home. “You see the love that people have for getting something tangible as a takeaway, not just to post on social media or text their friends,” he says. “It really exceeded our expectations as far as engagement and the attention it attracted through that experience.”



The opportunity to watch people interact with these AI tools in real life is invaluable for Wildlife, observing how they try to break the system or push it in new ways. And for Scott personally, it’s a reminder to keep pushing things forward. 

“People get jaded very quickly. We all see the shiny new thing, and then the magic can be lost very soon. So how do we keep building on the capabilities and exceeding what was possible a few months ago? That's always going to be the requirement… to continue to break the previous boundary and exceed what we thought was possible.”

“We want to continue to explore breakthrough ways to turn digital creation into tangible results and physical objects,” he adds. “The magic comes from being able to dream, create and see your imagination come to life in the real world in a visceral way. Audiences will move quickly past the mystique of image generation and begin to expect not just generative video but witnessing AI transform physical spaces. 

“Users will expect AI to go beyond their own meager inputs to surprise them and blow their minds by working from a mere seed of a thought and transforming it into stunning, emotional results. How long till AI makes art that can make us cry?”

Production
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
Work from Wildlife
My Cause, My Cleats - Design Cleats with AI: DK Metcalf
Amazon Web Services (AWS) x NFL
11/12/2024
19
0
My Cause, My Cleats - Design Cleats with AI: Maxx Crosby
Amazon Web Services (AWS) x NFL
11/12/2024
39
0
My Cause, My Cleats - Design Cleats with AI: Josh Allen
Amazon Web Services (AWS) x NFL
11/12/2024
15
0
ALL THEIR WORK
SUBSCRIBE TO LBB’S newsletter
FOLLOW US
LBB’s Global Sponsor
Group745
Language:
English
v10.0.0