[Ai]magination Elevates Humanity in Creative Pursuits

Have you ever wondered how artificial intelligence is reshaping the very fabric of creativity? As colors swirl on a digital canvas and algorithms craft narratives with uncanny precision, AI technology leaves an indelible mark on the art, media, and advertising industries. But are we witnessing the dawn of a new artistic renaissance, or are we dancing to the rhythm of binary beats? This intriguing interplay between human creativity and machine intelligence sparks endless curiosity among agencies and creative minds alike. To delve deeper into this fascinating evolution, we turn to the insights of renowned creative pioneers Frédéric Raillard and Farid Mokart from [Ai]magination. Join Mark Tungate as he navigates their extraordinary journey, exploring how AI has transformed their approach and what it means for the future of creativity.

Interview with creative minds from [Ai]magination

The co-founder and CEO of FRED & FARID lifts the lid on the agency’s new AI production studio, designed to “enhance the qualities of creatives.” Quite a few years back, I asked Frédéric Raillard and Farid Mokart – the co-founders of FRED & FARID – to be the cover stars of a magazine I worked for. I wanted something spectacular. “Leave it to us,” they said.

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They created a moody picture of them standing beside a guillotine in swirling mist. I used the headline “Sharp New Talents.” The guillotine was real. I can only imagine the amount of production effort that went into that photo. Thanks to AI, they could probably conjure it up with a couple of prompts today.

I mentioned this to Frédéric, who now runs Fred & Farid’s new AI production studio, [Ai]magination. He’s 100% passionate about the project but admits that AI initially depressed him. “When I started experimenting with ChatGTP, I asked it to imagine a dialogue between an old Porsche 911 and a new Tesla. And it came up with a really good dialogue! So I thought, ‘OK, what’s the point of us continuing?'”

While living in LA then, he shared his experience with a friend, the film director Tony Kaye. “I sent him a GTP dialogue between him and the studio about his film American History X. He said, ‘This is so accurate. Where did you get this?’ So then I was depressed. It was like, game over for creatives; the world won’t need us anymore.”

From an exhibition to a studio

The turnaround came when he went to an exhibition of AI art curated by his colleague Feng Huang, President and co-founder of Fred & Farid Shanghai. “You know how some Chinese people are with technology? They embrace it. So, while I was complaining and crying, Feng had already organized an exhibition with a hundred AI artists!” Frédéric says he was “blown away” by the quality of the work. The exhibition was called [Ai]magination. Frédéric copyrighted the name and turned the one-off exhibition into a studio inside the agency.

“The AI-generated pictures were really interesting, but as soon as the artist tried to add a logo, there was a complete misunderstanding of the brand platform and a brand’s needs…So we had, on the one hand, a group of amazing AI artists with a limited experience of branding and on the other a bunch of creatives who were cautious about using AI.”

Why not bring them together? To kick off the adventure, Frédéric sought internal recruits from the agency’s four offices: Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Shanghai. At first, Paris and New York were hesitant, while the tech-friendly China and California were all in. “At the beginning, we had 16 people working in Shanghai and LA. A lot of agencies were talking about AI – but not many of them were doing it. We decided to take the opposite approach: do a lot, experiment a lot, but shut up about it.”

Falling barriers

Currently, [Ai]magination has around 35 people across all FRED & FARID offices and has already worked with several clients, including LVMH, L’Oréal, Valentino, Ferrero, Heineken, and Fox Studios. It also offers its skills to other networks, notably McCann Worldgroup.

“It turned out to be harder to turn an AI artist into an advertising guy than the other way around,” reveals Frédéric. “Understanding advertising and branding is a complex process. It takes ten years.” On the other hand, excellent prompters surfaced internally pretty quickly. “I thought art directors would be the first to jump in. But you know what? Copywriters jumped in, too, because prompts are words. Some of our best prompters are copywriters.”

After the initial paranoia, is the advertising world beginning to accept AI? “There’s still a lot of fear. Some scary punchlines are coming out of Silicon Valley, such as Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) saying that AI will take 95% of marketing jobs. And, of course, there’s a lot of resistance in the production world.” But the genie is out of the bottle. “Once you see your competitor using AI, you become more flexible.”

Frédéric says that as [Ai]magination pioneered, attitudes have had time to be monitored. “Marketing departments are excited about AI because they have many new avenues to explore. Purchasing departments love it because it’s faster, cheaper, and more sustainable—even though it burns a lot of energy, it still has a lower footprint than overseas travel. Only the legal department is cautious.”

That’s because of the intellectual property issues posed by AI. Frédéric feels the legal resistance will soon diminish. “A single AI image has so many sources; there’s no real maternity or paternity of images anymore. And when there are eight million prompters on the planet, there won’t be enough lawyers to handle them all.”

To use AI…or not

Still, he advises brands to think hard about when using AI is appropriate. Does it clash with their values? “Take Nike, for example. It’s all about human beings transcending themselves through sport. So, Nike would never have a bunch of AI athletes on the screen. On the other hand, if they want to make an ad with a soccer team playing aliens on Mars…fine!” He also questions the ethical implications of a skincare brand using an AI-generated face to promote the benefits of anti-aging cream. Brands and agencies are navigating a hazardous new landscape.

The [Ai]magination team spent a year producing images and films to hone their expertise. “I was the slacker of the gang, and I even generated more than 10,000 images.” Hundreds of pictures were curated into a showreel of 4,000 assets uploaded on the [Ai]magination website. “Then, we were ready to talk to the world about what we were doing.”

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The studio has a human-centric philosophy. “We want to use AI to enhance the qualities of creative people. We don’t want to replace them. Some companies want to automatize everything. We want to keep humans at the core. Emotion, beauty, intuition, sensibility, consciousness, and imperfection… remain central.”

There have been a few suggestions that AI is a fad or a bubble, a bit like the “metaverse” a couple of years ago. Frédéric would disagree. “The more I use AI, the more it gives me vertigo. This isn’t a disruption. It isn’t even a revolution. This is a change of civilization.”

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YouTube: [Ai]magination Showreel 2024 (promotional clip)

Photo credit: The photo and the logo are owned by [Ai]imagination and were used with permission. The feature image was edited to alter the crop ratio, and an artificial background was added for decorative purposes.
Editorial notice: The guest author copy, and the quoted text from the interviewees were edited and condensed for style and clarity, but their meaning was not changed. The article was published with permission.

This guest article has been submitted by Mark Tungate. While we appreciate guest contributions, it's important to note that the views expressed by the author are not necessarily reflective of those held by TechAcute.