Adnatomy: GoFundMe Uses AI Animation to Bring Donation Stories to Life

The fundraising platform turned to cutting-edge generative tech

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GoFundMe showed that artificial intelligence can be used to tell very human stories with a recent campaign that broke new ground on the use of machine learning in creative work.

The fundraising platform combined AI-generated art with traditional animation techniques to illustrate some of the real donation campaigns from its 2022 year-end wrap-up, from Ukrainian refugee families being reunited to pets rescued from hurricane devastation, culminating in a sprawling street mural.

It’s one of the first ads to draw heavily on AI visuals in a way that weaves the output into a narrative rather than drawing attention to the novelty of the tech.

In the latest episode of Adweek’s Adnatomy, we spoke with the brand, agency AKQA San Francisco and director Paul Trillo to take us behind the scenes of the surreal process of guiding actors through a largely AI-generated spot and the challenges of keeping up with a technology evolving at...

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