Toys 'R' Us Riles Critics With 'First-Ever' AI-Generated Commercial Using Sora (arstechnica.com) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, Toys "R" Us announced that it had partnered with an ad agency called Native Foreign to create what it calls "the first-ever brand film using OpenAI's new text-to-video tool, Sora." OpenAI debuted Sora in February, but the video synthesis tool has not yet become available to the public. The brand film tells the story of Toys "R" Us founder Charles Lazarus using AI-generated video clips. "We are thrilled to partner with Native Foreign to push the boundaries of Sora, a groundbreaking new technology from OpenAI that's gaining global attention," wrote Toys "R" Us on its website. "Sora can create up to one-minute-long videos featuring realistic scenes and multiple characters, all generated from text instruction. Imagine the excitement of creating a young Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toys "R" Us, and envisioning his dreams for our iconic brand and beloved mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe in the early 1930s."
The company says that The Origin of Toys "R" Us commercial was co-produced by Toys "R" Us Studios President Kim Miller Olko as executive producer and Native Foreign's Nik Kleverov as director. "Charles Lazarus was a visionary ahead of his time, and we wanted to honor his legacy with a spot using the most cutting-edge technology available," Miller Olko said in a statement. In the video, we see a child version of Lazarus, presumably generated using Sora, falling asleep and having a dream that he is flying through a land of toys. Along the way, he meets Geoffery, the store's mascot, who hands the child a small red car. Many of the scenes retain obvious hallmarks of AI-generated imagery, such as unnatural movement, strange visual artifacts, and the irregular shape of eyeglasses. [...] Although the Toys "R" Us video uses key visual elements from Sora, it still required quite a bit of human post-production work to put it together. Sora eliminated the need for actors and cameras, but creating successful generations and piecing together the rest still took human scriptwriters and VFX artists to fill in the AI model's shortcomings. "The brand film was almost entirely created with Sora, with some corrective VFX and an original music score composed by Aaron Marsh of famed indie rock band Copeland," wrote Toys "R" Us in a press release. Comedy writer Mike Drucker wrapped up several of these criticisms into one post, writing: "Love this commercial is like, 'Toys R Us started with the dream of a little boy who wanted to share his imagination with the world. And to show how, we fired our artists and dried Lake Superior using a server farm to generate what that would look like in Stephen King's nightmares.'"
Other critical comments were more frank. Filmmaker Joe Russo posted: "TOYS 'R US released an AI commercial and it fucking sucks."
The company says that The Origin of Toys "R" Us commercial was co-produced by Toys "R" Us Studios President Kim Miller Olko as executive producer and Native Foreign's Nik Kleverov as director. "Charles Lazarus was a visionary ahead of his time, and we wanted to honor his legacy with a spot using the most cutting-edge technology available," Miller Olko said in a statement. In the video, we see a child version of Lazarus, presumably generated using Sora, falling asleep and having a dream that he is flying through a land of toys. Along the way, he meets Geoffery, the store's mascot, who hands the child a small red car. Many of the scenes retain obvious hallmarks of AI-generated imagery, such as unnatural movement, strange visual artifacts, and the irregular shape of eyeglasses. [...] Although the Toys "R" Us video uses key visual elements from Sora, it still required quite a bit of human post-production work to put it together. Sora eliminated the need for actors and cameras, but creating successful generations and piecing together the rest still took human scriptwriters and VFX artists to fill in the AI model's shortcomings. "The brand film was almost entirely created with Sora, with some corrective VFX and an original music score composed by Aaron Marsh of famed indie rock band Copeland," wrote Toys "R" Us in a press release. Comedy writer Mike Drucker wrapped up several of these criticisms into one post, writing: "Love this commercial is like, 'Toys R Us started with the dream of a little boy who wanted to share his imagination with the world. And to show how, we fired our artists and dried Lake Superior using a server farm to generate what that would look like in Stephen King's nightmares.'"
Other critical comments were more frank. Filmmaker Joe Russo posted: "TOYS 'R US released an AI commercial and it fucking sucks."
Hose me off (Score:2)
Kids in the 80s (Score:2)
If you're about my age one of your fondest memories is probably the Toys R Us Christmas commercials.
Can't make those any more. Someone might find a job.
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Try that today and half the store walks off with the demo units. The other half is bumping into each other because their phone is blocking their view.
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If you're about my age one of your fondest memories is probably the Toys R Us Christmas commercials.
If you had fond memories of Toys R Us as a kid, your family was probably pretty well off. I grew up in your average American middle-class suburban track housing neighborhood and distinctly remember my folks complaining about that store being horribly overpriced. Most of my Christmas gifts came from K-Mart, Sears and Costco.
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Most of my Christmas gifts came from K-Mart, Sears and Costco.
It's interesting how this stuff dates people, and probably locates them too. For instance, you can tell within a pretty small window how much older I am when I say that Costco didn't exist yet when I was young enough to have good Christmases, and a lot of my toys and video games came from sales at Kay-Bee Toys, but Sears was still a thing too. And uh, Montgomery Ward's.
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Re: Kids in the 80s (Score:2)
Yeah, they bet on all the wrong horses, both in products (like CD-i and 3DO) and sales methods (layaway, walk ins, and catalog sales instead of Internet.)
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Nonsense - Toy R' Us back in the day carried little or no exclusive merchandise. Whatever the sticker was there it would be the exact same sticker at Target, Macy, Bonton, Bacons etc.
They were not a 'discounter' but they were not boutique either, not like going into a FAO or something like that. Probably sold things at MSRP 90% of the time.
The likely answer is you really were not middle class. One of the really strange things about this country is being 'middle class' is some odd badge of honor. People w
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> If you're about my age one of your fondest memories is probably the Toys R Us Christmas commercials.
> Can't make those any more. Someone might find a job.
My grandmother bought me the d&d red box there. I still remember that commercial and jingle. I told myself I wasn't going to grow up if it meant I wouldn't haven't fun anymore.
Amazingly, I haven't, and I don't regret it one bit hah
looks like a normal commercial to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not really what you'd call an TV commercial expert, like most of us I suspect I try to avoid being forced to watch them as much as possible. But I didn't really see anything particularly weird or bad about this one. If you hadn't told me it was AI created I'd never know know that. It seems a bit too much CGI for my taste is all. It's probably not a great ad but saying 'it fucking sucks' is over the top.
The critics I think are just letting their personal animosity against generative AI drive what they are saying.
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Seems like these days the majority of TV commercials are for medications, car dealerships, insurance, and attorneys. With the notable exception of some of the Geico commercials actually being pretty funny, they're generally the worst unwatchable tripe imaginable. By that standard, this Toys R Us commercial is roughly par for the course. I think the critics have forgotten that this is an ad, where the bar for quality has already been buried firmly in the center of the earth by the infamous infomercial. [reddit.com]
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In fact, I'd say the standards for this are a lot higher than that of the average ad.
That's not high praise for this, just a general observation of how bad ads typically are.
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100% agreed. I probably wouldn't have thought anything of it if I hadn't been told, "IT'S AI - SPEND THE ENTIRE COMMERCIAL SCOURING IT FOR ANY SIGNS!!!" A kid watching it on TV certainly wouldn't.
And furthermore, as if the AVERAGE "TV commercial for a Toy Store special effects" are the paragon of flawless immersive realism? *eyeroll*
The way people are still going on about AI is getting embarrassing. I feel bad for these people. It's like ranting about services moving to the internet in the '00s and bec
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"SPEND THE ENTIRE COMMERCIAL SCOURING IT FOR ANY SIGNS"
You jest, but there was one glitch: at about 23 seconds in, the boy is walking away from the camera, close-up of his feet. His socks look weird, something's over-enhanced the texture of the fabric and added a sort of outline or border. Makes them look like they have an "edge detect" filter applied over them.
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I don't think that was a mistake. I think that was deliberate to make it look like bad green screen (so you'd be more convinced it's normal CGI).
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No expert on AI-gen video, but as I used to matte things together, wonder if they used a kid actor and matted him in. The lines where his head intersects with the background are a little clean and sharp compared to....I guess what real life is supposed to look like when AI generates it.
Re:looks like a normal commercial to me (Score:5, Insightful)
The film is firmly stuck in the uncanny valley, although this may be partly because we're seeing more and more AI content so w're getting better at spotting it.
But even if you could push this thing out of the uncanny valley, it would still have the problem that all AI generated content has: it has successfully aped human creative mediocrity. Sure, the film doesn't have the mind-numbing and occasionally amusing qualities of human incompetence. The irritating thing about the film isn't that it's *bad*. The irritating thing is that it's just *meh* with sparkly gubbins glued on. This film is not going to move anyone to feel admiration, wonder, or nostalgia for the *subjects* of the film. What it's going to prompt is emotional responses to the *film itself*, like revulsion, excitement about the technology, or curiosity about the mechanics.
That's because unlike art, AI generated content isn't communication. There's no human point of view on the other end of the line for you to connect with. It has a profoundly impersonal quality. If you encountered such a thing before the era of deep learning AI generated content, you'd assume it had been written and edited by a committee; a committee of bureaucrats working diligently following rules and instructions to produce what was asked of it, but who aren't personally invested at all in the meaning of what it is being produced. And the fact that someone thinks this kind of thing is good enough to do the job with someone like you is irksome.
The reason that the film evokes emotions about itself rather than it's ostensible subject has to do with the multi-level nature of communication. The film literally has nothing to say about the subject, but the existence of the film and how it used speaks volumes about the people behind it and their attitudes toward you.
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I'm not really what you'd call an TV commercial expert, like most of us I suspect I try to avoid being forced to watch them as much as possible. But I didn't really see anything particularly weird or bad about this one. If you hadn't told me it was AI created I'd never know know that. It seems a bit too much CGI for my taste is all. It's probably not a great ad but saying 'it fucking sucks' is over the top.
The critics I think are just letting their personal animosity against generative AI drive what they are saying.
A few things jump out on the 2nd watching.
1) The panning in the opening sequence looks off, like the model doesn't quite understand perspective.
2) The characters at the start are way in the uncanny valley, photographic human textures but very weird mannerisms.
3) In the dream sequence the boy looks more cartoonish, though not quite enough to feel like a directors choice.
4) There's visual artifacts all over the place (tree at the start), which I'd normally attribute to a low bitrate streaming, but in this cas
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Well, the big deal is that it was created without actors.
Apparently a large amount of human involved video editing and customization was required to come up with the ad, so it's not like they gave one prompt and out came the ad. Instead it appears they gave multiple prompts and a lot of video editing and other things to produce the final video.
Eh (Score:2)
Looks a bit like Polar Express only with less uncanny valley effect.
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Yeah, that's the thing that gets me here with the complaints. IMHO, there's less Uncanny Valley effect here than your typical modern CGI.
If anything, I think people are basically creating their own Uncanny Valley. I've many times done experiments on social media where I see people ranting about AI, where I'll post human-made masterpiece art or professional photographs and say they're AI, or vice versa - AI works annd say that they're humans. And almost without fail, the people proceed to bash how awful a
Superior brand film (Score:1)
Toys 'R' Us Ragebaits So People Know They Exist (Score:2)
A hike through the uncanny valley (Score:2)
This is one tough hike through the uncanny valley. I could only tolerate a minute or so.
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>I could only tolerate a minute or so.
So the whole video
Iâ(TM)m ok with that (Score:1)
I dislike the video but... (Score:2)
But remember, just over 3 years ago we got a picture of an AI given a prompt "Avacado chair" and it made a tiny image of a chair that looked like an avacado and that was the pinacle of AI image generation.
Just 3 years ago!!
This feels like the equivilant of going from the original Tron movie CGI to the special effects of The Avenger in 3 years.
Not bad, actually (Score:2)
Really, as commercials go, I've seen WAY worse, long before text-to-video AI was a thing (at least, the visuals -- I didn't let the audio play).
That said, Geoffrey (the giraffe) looks weird in that commercial, compared to what I remember growing up. Guess they've changed his look over the years.
Poor mocap. (Score:2)
To me it looked like a normal CGI video, except the motion capture kinda sucked.
I feel like the critics are biased? (Score:2)
There's a LOT of hate for all things "AI" right now, especially among people involved in the arts in some manner. Some of it's totally justified, and a lot of it is just FUD.
I didn't even watch this commercial yet, but someone's got to be the first to try using a new tool like this "text to video" AI, and obviously it's going to have rough edges. A commercial that's obviously a fictional "dream sequence", showing a young version of the founder handed a toy by the mascot giraffe, doesn't seem to me like it'