Artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in many aspects of our lives. It's also an area that advertisers are watching closely. And in Japan, that attention now includes a new TV commercial.
The commercial looks and sounds like a lot of other ads on Japanese television.
A bouncy song, a smiling model and a prominently featured product — which in this case is a new line of green tea.
However, the model used in Itoen’s latest commercial was created by artificial intelligence.
She first appears with graying hair and a few lines under her eyes.
After she pushes a bottle of green tea toward the camera and then pulls it back, a younger version of the same model is smiling back at the audience.
The adjustment was more basic than makeup — it was simply changing the face.
The company said AI also played a role in product design.
First, an image-generating AI program helped create more than a dozen labeled bottles working with a series of words and phrases like “green tea leaves” and “health.”
Humans then narrowed the choices, made some modifications, and returned to AI to further reduce the field before the human designers returned to finalize the packaging.
The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that design work is now common with AI, but artificial models are a new area in Japan.
Elsewhere, AI models are already at work for clothing brands from Prada and Dior to Levis.
