The Internet is “free” (compared to the sad state of things we have today…). You browse it, you discover something new. Something unique. Something interesting. Information feels more like a nicely cooked meal, rather than a fast food that was force-fed to you on the go (what we have today).

And suddenly you stumble upon this video, the new ad from SONY.

“WHAT?”

First, it hits you with a wonderful rendition of The Knife - Heartbeats by Jose Gonzales. If you survive that joy, you are finished by an unspeakable show of countless bouncy balls pouring down the hills of San Francisco. Something that many would have thought of, but never imagined could be scaled up to such an extent!

You watch once. You watch twice. You watch until the time tells you that tomorrow’s early morning wake-up just got harder.

You watch it tomorrow. You share it with friends. You express how amazed you are and how cool and simple the idea is, and how brave and creative the execution is.

Later, you find the behind-the-scenes:

You watch, you enjoy, you share, you talk about it.

You dream of changing jobs and working for marketing agencies, movie studios, creative industry. You want to execute such ideas!

This video, this idea, and its execution now occupy a small corner of your mind, and it never leaves.

Through the years, you stumble upon many commercials, and from time to time, the creativity of them reminds you of that SONY ad.

BURBERRY (behind the scenes)

GUINNESS (behind the scenes)

Old Spice (behind the scenes)

There is more…

And every time, each of them shares the creative genius of production planning, directing, acting, editing, etc.

All of them rely on HUMAN CREATIVITY. Many people work together to realize something out of the ordinary, something out of place, something dreamy or brave, or risky. The use of real tools, real world, with its opportunities and limitations.

And it’s a pleasure to watch. It inspires you.

AI-generated commercials. They have not yet taken off at full scale. But brands and companies try them. People also explore - how would it look?

Here is one:

Well.
It tries to be funny. It has all the ingredients of “how the hell did they film that?” (whale?:). You watch it. But once is enough. And you might even just skip it. You know that no one did an insane plan of somehow getting the whale onto the highway. Maybe a dead one, maybe would then use some cranes with straps to “animate” it. No one dancing around the fire while being ON fire. No one had to flip a truck and set the scene as if it were a crash.

You know that HUMAN CREATIVITY here was expressed only via prompting. Only “wishing” to see something, but not actually planning and doing that something.

You also know that you can create the same type of video if you just spend a few hours with the AI gen tools.

This won’t be shared as much and won’t be talked about.

Are we killing our own creativity by making things easier where they should stay difficult? Maybe we need obstacles to come up with a cool way to overcome them. Maybe we need limitations that require time, require taking risks, require trying and failing in order to get to something great?

Can a prompt be as admired and spoken of as SONY’s filming day at SF, where gazillions of bouncing balls stormed the streets?

Personally, I am not impressed by prompting.

Every prompt that generates a video kills a creative production that could have involved many and inspired millions.

I’m not impressed. Sadly.