Microsoft made an ad with generative AI and nobody noticed

This changeable was astir apt made by AI — the clipboards and Mason jar are bully tells. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has revealed that it’s created a minute-long advert for its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop hardware utilizing generative AI. But there’s a twist: it released the advertisement astir 3 months ago, and no-one seemed to announcement the AI elements.

The ad, which went unrecorded connected YouTube connected January 30th, isn’t wholly made up of generated content. In a Microsoft Design blog post published Wednesday, elder plan communications manager Jay Tan admits that “the occasional AI hallucination would rear its head,” meaning the creators had to close immoderate of the AI output and integrate it with existent footage.

“When deciding connected which shots wrong the advertisement were to beryllium AI generated, the squad determined that immoderate intricate question specified arsenic closeups of hands typing connected keyboards had to beryllium changeable live,” Tan says. “Shots that were speedy cuts oregon with constricted motion, however, were premier for co-creation with generative AI tools.”

Microsoft hasn’t specified precisely which shots were generated utilizing AI, though Tan did item the process. AI tools were archetypal utilized to make “a compelling script, storyboards and a transportation deck.” Microsoft’s squad past utilized a operation of written prompts and illustration images to get a chatbot to make substance prompts that could beryllium fed into representation generators. Those images were iterated connected further, edited to close hallucinations and different errors, and past fed into video generators similar Hailuo oregon Kling. Those are the lone circumstantial AI tools named by Tan, with the chatbots and representation generators unspecified.

“We astir apt went done thousands of antithetic prompts, chiseling distant astatine the output small by small until we got what we wanted. There’s ne'er truly a one-and-done prompt,” says originative manager Cisco McCarthy. “It comes from being relentless.” That makes the process dependable similar much enactment than it mightiness person been otherwise, but ocular decorator Brian Townsend estimates that the squad “probably saved 90% of the clip and outgo it would typically take.”

The process echoes caller comments from Microsoft’s plan main Jon Friedman to my workfellow Tom Warren, that AI is going to go 1 much instrumentality successful creatives’ arsenals, alternatively than replacing them outright. As Friedman puts it, “suddenly the plan occupation is however bash you edit?”

Despite the information that the video has been online for astir 3 months, there’s small motion that anyone noticed the AI output until now. The advertisement has a small implicit 40,000 views connected YouTube astatine the clip of writing, and nary of the apical comments speculate that the video was produced utilizing AI. 

Knowing that AI was involved, it’s casual capable to conjecture wherever — shots of gathering notes that intelligibly weren’t hand-written, a Mason jar that’s suspiciously large, the telling AI sheen to it each — but without knowing to look for it, it’s wide that plentifulness of viewers couldn’t spot the difference. The ad’s speedy cuts assistance fell the AI output’s flaws, but suggest that successful the close hands, AI tools are present almighty capable to spell unnoticed.