A Toys “R” Us executive called the company’s AI-powered video a “success” despite the controversy it generated online, saying in an interview with NBC News that the company will add generative artificial intelligence to its “tool kit” in the future.
On Monday, Toys “R” Us released an AI-generated video at the Cannes Film Festival to a flurry of mixed reactions online.
According to a news release, this is the first time a brand video has been created using OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video tool. Creative agency and production company Native Foreign had special access to Sora, which is not yet publicly available, the release noted.
The one-minute clip features a young Charles Lazarus, the late founder of Toys “R” Us, in the family’s bike shop alongside the brand’s mascot, Jeffrey the Giraffe.
The video’s debut sparked an immediate reaction online.
Many creatives, who are concerned that artificial intelligence will eventually replace acting, writing and design jobs, have criticized the implementation of AI products and teams in their industries.
“I love this ad it’s like Toys R Us started with the dream of a little boy who wanted to share his imagination with the world,” writer and comedian Mike Drucker posted on X, receiving thousands of likes. “And to show how, we fired our artists and dried up Lake Superior using a server farm to generate what it would look like in Stephen King’s nightmares.”
The sentiment was echoed in dozens of other posts that garnered millions of views on social media.
Comic book artist and illustrator Andy Kluthe claimed to X that Toys “R” Us should have hired actors instead, which he says would have made the video “look a thousand times less weird.”
Over the past few months, OpenAI and other generative AI companies have sparked various controversies about their relationship with creators. In May, OpenAI paused a voice feature after Scarlett Johansson threatened the company with legal action following claims that the voice sounded like her own. Perplexity AI was under the microscope this month, facing allegations from Forbes that the generative AI company was ripping off its work without proper attribution.
Despite the backlash, the video’s creators at Toys “R” Us and Native Foreign view the video as a success.
“I think it’s becoming part of our toolkit,” said Toys ‘R’ Us Studios President Kim Miller Olko. “It was a test. I think it was successful. I think there was a lot of learning. If the opportunity comes up again and it’s the right fit, we take it, but it’s one of many different things we would do.”
In response to criticism about AI and its potential to replace human workers, both Miller Olko and Native Foreign chief creative officer Nick Kleverow said that’s not the case with this particular project.
“There’s a lot of fear and rumors about what it’s all about,” Miller Olko said. “Until you really see what it is and how it works, you really don’t have a true understanding.”
According to Kleverov, the number of people – about a dozen – who worked on the video is about the same as any other job. He said the team worked for three months.
“Jeffrey is animation. He’s a caricature,” added Miller Olko. “We weren’t going to hire a giraffe, you know what I mean? It was an animation.
Native Foreign has worked with companies including Vogue Italia to create content using AI tools in the past. Kleverov said it was an easy choice to partner with Miller Olko after a meeting the two had in which they bonded over a shared vision for testing new technologies.
“The main thing was to make sure of that [the video] it had emotion and soul,” Miller Olko added in the interview.
Despite the amount of online backlash, some viewers had positive impressions of the video.
“It’s pretty impressive,” wrote content creator Tim Simmons, who goes by the name Theoretically Media online. “I definitely think we’ll be seeing Sora in more advertising spots soon. think?”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
