Last Diwali, Mondelez International, the company that owns the Cadbury brand, introduced Indians to ‘Not just a Cadbury ad’ in which actor Shah Rukh Khan urged Indians to go to their neighbourhood stores for their festive shopping needs.
The catch, however, was that Khan never actually spoke about these stores. An artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm took a single video of Khan and changed how his lips moved, combined with his tonal qualities, to essentially make him say the names of these neighbourhood stores in subsequent videos.
Mondelez is not the only company to try something like this. The use of AI in video is practically changing how firms look at everything from advertising campaigns to corporate learning material. In fact, Ashray Malhotra, co-founder and chief executive of Rephrase.ai— the company behind Mondelez’ ad —envisions a future where videos will be completely machine-driven.
To create Khan’s video, Rephrase used a branch of AI called Generative Adversarial Networks, or GANs, that can create new videos out of existing ones, and text documents. Malhotra said Rephrase is working with a top crypto firm in India to convert their blog posts into videos, while brands are also using the technology to create internal company documents into video-led corporate learning material for employees.