Toys “R” Us recently released its first advertisement generated by artificial intelligence, with an executive with the retailer implying that similar means could be used in the future.
The ad was created using OpenAI’s Sora, a text-to-video AI tool that is not yet publicly available, and focuses on the toy retailer’s founder, Charles Lazarus. Many on social media have denounced the ad for both its appearance and for contributing to concerns that AI could take away jobs from artists and other creators involved in advertising.
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 https://t.co/RBPoH0ax5o
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) June 26, 2024
Toys R Us isn’t even really a company anymore because private equity destroyed it. Commercial made by no one to advertise a company that doesn’t exist featuring childhood experiences that will never happen again. https://t.co/d86zcBEZAj
— Brenden Gallagher (@brendengallager) June 25, 2024
Despite the largely negative reaction, Toys “R” Us Studios President Kim Miller Olko argued that the ad was a success.
“I think this becomes part of our toolkit,” Olko said. “It was a test. I think it was successful. I think there was a lot of learnings. If the opportunity arises again, and it’s the right fit, we use it but it’s one of many different things that we would do.”
Olko also dismissed concerns regarding AI potentially replacing human workers, arguing that Geoffrey the Giraffe, the retailer’s mascot who is also featured in the ad, is a cartoon and that they were not going to hire a real-life giraffe.
“There’s a lot of fear out there and hearsay on what it all is,” Miller Olko said. “Until you kind of really see what it is and how it works, you don’t really have a true understanding.”
Toys “R” Us Studios partnered with Native Foreign to create the ad, which a press release states had early access to Sora. Nik Kleverov, Native Foreign’s chief creative officer, stated that about a dozen people worked on the ad, which he said is around the same as other jobs.
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AI and its impact on the world has been a growing concern for many, with former President Donald Trump calling AI “very disconcerting” when discussing an AI impersonation of himself advertising a product.
Lots of people are getting this deepfake scam ad of me… are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes? This is a serious problem pic.twitter.com/llkhxswQSw
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 3, 2023
Similarly, YouTube megastar MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, warned his fans on social media about a scam advertisement of an AI video impersonating him. The video featured a near-perfect impersonation of Donaldson and showed the YouTuber attempting to scam people into buying iPhone 15 Pro models for just $2.
