At the start of the year, every single one of the roughly 100,000 people working for advertising giant Publicis received a video message from the chief executive thanking them personally, by name and in their first language, for their hard work.
To film and edit so many messages would normally involve hundreds of hours of work, but it was much easier to pull off thanks to the industry’s new best friend: artificial intelligence.
The purpose of the stunt, which included AI-versions of senior leaders engaged in each staff member’s favourite hobbies from DJing to waterskiing, was to emphasise the hyper-personalised advertising that rapidly evolving technology is making possible. These ads are fast, cheap to produce at massive scale and with the fine-tuned customer targeting optimised by the vast troves of data now collected on individuals.