Taipei Tourism Ad - Created with AI

Inspired by Jeff MacDonald, I embarked on a challenge to create a spec ad entirely utilizing the capabilities of Generative AI tools.

TLDR: It’s exciting stuff, but it’s not gonna replace humans. Yet.

Allow me to present my thirty-second spec ad for Taipei Tourism. It serves as an excellent starting point, but we still have some distance to go. However, one area where Generative AI holds immense potential is in the creation of pre-edits and pre-visualizations for commercials, streamlining the production process.

My personal connection to Taipei, having been born there and raised in California, served as an inspiration for this ad. Countless visits to see my family and my prior work directing documentaries in Taipei ignited the idea of promoting it as a tourist destination.

I initially utilized ChatGPT to generate a first draft of the script, refining it through careful rewriting and fine-tuning. Employing AI Voice tools, particularly Clipchamp, enabled me to craft the voice-over with options for gender, tone, and speed.

For the creation of inspirational images and storyboards, I turned to Midjourney. However, when it came to producing the videos themselves, I encountered some challenges.

RunwayGen2 was employed using the Midjourney storyboards as a foundation. This took a lot of work, as Runway is a new software, and the outputs were often odd, funky, and sometimes downright demonic, with people having ten hands and three eyes. (Lol) This took a lot of work and a lot of outputs.

While I edited the ad in Adobe Premiere (not yet an AI tool), I experimented with Google LM to generate AI music based on a voice prompts. This, however, had “mixed” results. I finally used a piece of music from a traditional music library.

The conclusion? There’s a wild future with Generative AI content making. But… it still needs a human to guide it. And reiterate on it until it’s good. The human needs to know what “good” looks like. But the tools will be wildly powerful. Perhaps there’s the key: the combination of human creativity and AI power? What do you think of this spot and my process making it?

Watch the ad here. 

Posted: 2023-06-23