You can be a lead in a romantic film promoting an airline and global travel, or at least your face can do so thanks to a new Qatar Airways campaign. The airline has a new AI Adventure campaign combining a short film and deepfake tools as a way of literally seeing yourself having an exciting trip around the world.
You can try it out for yourself here. You just need to upload a photo of your face and pick a scene from the film put together by the airline. There is a male and female lead; some scenes have just one or both, though you don’t need to upload two faces if you choose not to. Once the picture is approved, you have to pick your skin tone to ensure the result looks as much like you as possible.
The nonverbal film tells the story of an actress completing a film in London who bumps into a man and drops her earrings. The man tries to return them to her, traveling to places as far apart as Cape Town, Tokyo, and New York before barely missing her. Eventually, he succeeds in giving them back at an airport in Doha, and they have their own romantic trip, with a Qatar airplane flying overhead.
“Featuring pioneering AI capabilities unseen elsewhere in the airline industry, our latest campaign not only showcases the innovative spirit driving our brand, but also encapsulates our customer-centric approach, helping to turn every journey into an adventure,” Qatar Airways Chief Commercial Officer Thierry Antinori said. “After all, there’s no limit to how far a dream can take you.”
You can watch the original film and a couple of examples of edited clips below.
AI Ad Magic
The altered films are mixed in quality. The facial expressions and basic look are surprisingly smooth, but the fact that the hair stays the same is a little disconcerting, though not as much as seeing your face on a body type unfamiliar with what you see in the mirror. It is notable how strict the rules regarding what faces you can upload are.
The airline doesn’t explicitly say you can’t use photos of someone else, just that they can’t be inappropriate. Yet, after several experiments, the website clearly prevented any famous people’s faces from being used. The only loophole was if the photo was not very high resolution. The reason is likely how you have to own the content (the picture) you share with the website.
In other words, you have to be the star. That’s probably because the terms and conditions state that while you retain some rights, Qatar Airways can use and modify the video as they choose.
This isn’t Qatar Airways’ only AI experiment. The airline also offers an AI-powered digital human as cabin crew named Sama 2.0. The virtual being is designed to assist passengers with basic in-flight queries, providing an assistant to complement the human cabin crew.
These ads are definitely a step up technically from the more satirical deepfake Jennifer Lopez employed by Virgin Voyages, at least. In that case, the personalized ads you could make were altered only in the names and aspects of the company Lopez mentioned.
Whether this is the dawn of a new age in marketing and advertising is unclear, but you can bet there will be at least a few more attempts as AI video tech becomes better and cheaper.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
