FEBRUARY 2017
DO ANDROIDS DREAM? When it was announced that McCann’s latest hire would be starting at the ad agency’s Japanese office on 1 April 2016, a few eyebrows were raised. April Fool’s probably isn’t the best first day on the job for what claimed to be “the world’s first artificial intelligence creative director” – or AI-CD for short. But the technology stuck around, and by September it had not only been given its first client assignment – create a TV ad for Mondelez Japan’s Clorets mint brand – but was facing off against McCann creative director, and human being, Mitsuru Kuramoto in a competition to see who could create the better ad. Kuramoto won a popular vote, but with a narrower margin than you might imagine – 54 per cent against AI-CD’s 46 per cent. But how does it actually work? Will you find AI-CD’s robotic arm clutching a whisky the night before a big pitch? Or its silver dome in the director’s chair on a commercial shoot? “AI-CD gives the big creative direction at the very beginning of a project, based on the client’s creative brief,” explains Shun Matsuzaka, creative planner at McCann Japan and founder of McCann Millennials. “Once the direction is conceived, it writes out the optimal solution for the brief in Japanese calligraphy, with its robotic arm. Footage is then produced by a human team based on AI-CD’s direction.” The AI-CD is now working with its second client, according to Matsuzaka. He declined to name the brand, except to specify it is “a music company”. So, does AI-CD have a bright future at the agency? “It is under consideration, as it needs more financial investment as well as human resourses,” says Matsuzaka. “However, so long as we have clients who are interested in AI-CD, we will continue our efforts developing it.”
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