Unsettling AI-generated beer commercial and AI pizza

An artificial intelligence-generated viral beer commercial was created to evoke our anxiety about artificial intelligence, according to its creators.

There's a video called Synthetic Summer that is in the style of an extremely generic feel-good beer ad, but the disturbing visuals keep getting weirder and weirder until the end.

Developed by Private Island, a commercial production company that works with mixed media. According to its co-founder Chris Boyle, the video has received over 40 million views.

“It’s a cultural taking point that we’re all interested in at this moment in time,” says London-based Boyle.

“The uncanny nature of AI and the sense of vertigo of how quickly the technology is changing and what the repercussions of that means.

“Stuff that seemed impossible a year ago or even six months ago suddenly becomes possible. That acceleration is unnerving.

“We need to have responsible conversations about what it means. Every time in history when there has been technology that has a potential for societal change we haven’t necessarily legislated it and that would be a mistake with AI.”

The video was created using Stable Diffusion, Modelscape, and Runway Gen2.

“We work across 2D, 3D, and live action so we’re always integrating new technology into the work that we do, it makes a lot of sense for us to play around with AI and we’ve been doing it for a while,” says Boyle.

“So we make stuff half for the purpose of just enjoying making it, it’s an interesting way to tell stories.”

AI Pizza

This week, another AI-generated ad appeared on the internet for a fictional pizza restaurant called Pepperoni Hug Spot.

Images for the pizza commercial were generated with Midjourney and animated with Runway Gen2. ChatGPT wrote the script as well.