Remember AI-CD β?
McCann Japan introduced the artificial intelligence creative director last year and subsequently pitted it against real human Mitsuru Kuramoto in a competition to create an ad for Mondelez Japan brand Clorets Mint Tab (Kuramoto won).
For its latest experiment, McCann Japan turned to AI-CD β to create a music video for Kawaii pop girl group Magical Punchline. To shake things up even more, the music video will be created before the actual music track even exists.
AI-CD β was programmed to create “the optimal visual expression” for the group’s new song, based on what The Drum describes as “a structural analysis of music-centered commercials added to its database.”
As it turns out, artificially intelligent creative director developed an approach that might make you a little uncomfortable. AI-CD β recommended creating “a stimulating video that conveys hunting instinct through a tone of ennui” by “using a school motif” and “objectification.”
Uhh…
The approach is made all the more disturbing by the young age of members of the group, which was launched last year by Japanese idol Rena Sato with the concept of “a ‘girls fantasy’ mixing elements of Harry Potter and Dragon Quest into her own fantasy world.”
According to The Drum, McCann Millenials is now working on shooting a music video based on the instructions, again without any sort of backing track to go on. Can we maybe get an alternative strategy, AI-CD β?
Magical Punchline’s music label, Pony Canyon, is going plans release the completed music video, sans music, ahead of the song itself and McCann Millenials is documenting the process with a behind-the-scenes video.
We’re more than a little perplexed by this whole exercise, to say the least.
But before you pin too much of the blame on AI-CD β, keep in mind it created the instructions based on “music-centered commercials” made by humans. So it’s hard to say how much the misogynist approach owes to past work by actual people and how much can be attributed to the peculiarities of the AI-CD β’s analysis. At the very least, it shows the limitations and drawbacks of artificially intelligent strategy devoid of any sort of human social filter. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that AI-CD β is designed to create what it has determined people want.
We imagine the end product (much like this whole premise, really) resembling something out of Black Mirror.