Toys "R" Us premiered an AI-generated brand film at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival, created using OpenAI's text-to-video tool Sora. It depicts the company founder's vision and its mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe, with AI contributing 80-85% and VFX applied on top.
The one-minute brand film, directed by Nik Kleverov and produced by Kim Miller Olko, features a young Charles Lazarus dreaming about flying through a land of toys and meeting Geoffrey.
The AI-generated commercial received mixed reactions online, with some praising it as innovative while others criticized it for lacking visual continuity, unsettling tone, and being a sign of the company's budget constraints and decline. Toys "R" Us defended it as honoring the founder's legacy and exploring AI-produced advertising.
The use of OpenAI's Sora for the Toys "R" Us commercial raised concerns about potential job displacement in the video production industry, the quality of AI-generated artwork, and the impact on traditional acting jobs. Some argue that human error in storytelling, rather than the AI tool itself, led to the ad's lack of success.
OpenAI showcased Sora at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival. Kleverov was among the first filmmakers granted access to the tool, which was released to limited creators in February 2024 and is still undergoing testing before public release.
Toys "R" Us and Native Foreign, an AI-focused ad agency involved in the project, defended the use of AI, highlighting Sora's ability to explore imagination in motion.
Sources: NBC News, Fast Company, Newsweek, Forbes, Ars Technica, PCMag, The Verge, VentureBeat, Benzinga, Head Topics, No Film School, Daily Dot, Tom's Guide
This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.
