Ever wanted to be in a commercial? This airline is about to do it, through the power of AI
You can star in a romantic film promoting an airline and world travel, or at least your face can, thanks to a new campaign from Qatar Airways. The airline has a new AI Adventure campaign that combines a short film and deepfake tools as a way to literally see yourself take a thrilling trip around the world.
You can try it yourself here. All you need to do is upload a photo of your face and choose a scene from the movie that the airline has put together. There is a male and female lead; some scenes only have one or both, but you don’t have to upload two faces if you don’t want to. Once the photo is approved, you need to choose your skin tone to make sure the result looks as much like you as possible.
The non-verbal film tells the story of an actress finishing a film in London who bumps into a man and drops her earrings. The man tries to return them, traveling to places as far apart as Cape Town, Tokyo and New York, but narrowly misses her. Eventually he manages to return them at an airport in Doha and they have their own romantic journey, with a Qatari plane flying overhead.
“Our latest campaign, featuring groundbreaking AI capabilities not seen anywhere else in the airline industry, not only showcases the innovative spirit that drives our brand, but also encapsulates our customer-centric approach, turning every journey into an adventure,” said Thierry Antinori, Chief Commercial Officer of Qatar Airways. “After all, there’s no limit to how far a dream can take you.”
Below you can watch the original film and some examples of edited clips.
AI advertising magic
The edited movies are of varying quality. The facial expressions and basic look are surprisingly smooth, but the fact that the hair stays the same is a little disconcerting, although not as much as seeing your face on a body type you don’t recognize from what you see in the mirror. It’s striking how strict the rules are regarding which faces you can upload.
The airline does not explicitly say that you cannot use photos of someone else, only that they cannot be inappropriate. However, after several experiments, the website clearly prevented the use of faces of famous people. The only leak was if the photo was not of a very high resolution. The reason is probably how to own the content (the photo) that 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 certain rights, Qatar Airways can use and modify the video however they want.
This isn’t Qatar Airways’ only AI experiment. The airline is also offering an AI-powered digital human as cabin crew, called Sama 2.0. The virtual being is designed to help passengers with basic in-flight queries, providing an assistant to complement the human cabin crew.
These ads are definitely a step forward technically compared to the more satirical ones deepfake Jennifer Lopez employed by Virgin Voyages, at least. In that case, the personalized ads you could create were changed only to the names and aspects of the company Lopez mentioned.
Whether this is the beginning of a new era in marketing and advertising is unclear, but you can bet there will be a few more attempts as AI video technology gets better and cheaper.
