A Glimpse Of The Future AI Advertising?

The ChatGPT app did not indicate that what I was about to do might constitute AI Advertising. It simply said, “Happy Holidays! Star in your own holiday short,” with a “Create A Video” button. Being the curious type, I clicked it.

No prompt was necessary on my part. I didn’t need to upload an image of myself or give any instructions whatsoever. The prompt ChatGPT supplied read, “🎅 Create my holiday video,” The video below is what was produced.

---

Forget the fact that it made me look like some plastic version of myself. It’s the words used and the way the gift is presented that matter most. Here’s the dialogue that the simple prompt produced. If you know me even a little, it’s not very subtle AI advertising: “Ho ho, Jeff. You’ve been so good this year that I brought you something I know you’ve always wanted. It’s Sony’s 24mm f1.4 G Master Lens. Perfect for those sunset shots in Buenos Aires.“

I’ve researched that specific lens multiple times before today. It would certainly be in my browser history. I spent the first month of this year posting a slew of sunset photographs from a rooftop in Buenos Aires. This was a magnificently well-targeted ad, even if Sony didn’tt pay for it. But I’ve never had an advertisement depict me receiving the thing I might want from a Santa telling me I deserve it while recounting memorable sunsets in Buenos Aires. Never. Until today, that is.

Granted, the “me” in the video looks only similar to me. I’m not sure where they got that version of me from. Maybe they dumbed that version of me down on purpose. It didn’t feel like the “me” over on Sora. That “me” is way better than the me in that video above. And yes, the entirety of the last few sentences felt weird to type.

This AI Advertising Is Something Entirely New

What happened today wasn’t just better targeting. It was something completely different.

Traditional advertising, even the creepiest retargeted banner ad, you know, the one that makes you swear your phone is listening to you? Even that ad still maintains a boundary. The ad is over there. I am over here. I am just the audience.

This obliterated that line. I wasn’t just watching an ad. I was in it. I wasn’t being sold to. I was being narrated. A fictional authority figure was telling me I’d been good, that I deserved this thing, while using my own digitally preserved memories as evidence.

We’ve spent years worrying about algorithmic feeds, and rightly so. But those systems only curate what we see. What’s coming next curates us. It casts us as characters in stories designed to specifically to influence our desires, with our own data serving as the script.

And here’s what troubles me most: I didn’t ask for this. I clicked a button that said “Create A Video.” There was no disclosure, no indication that what I was about to experience would be a personalized advertisement wrapped in a holiday greeting. The transaction was hidden inside the gift.

And here’s the thing…. maybe it wasn’t even on purpose. What if it was just part of an LLM “hallucination?” Maybe this video was just another form of the LLM not quite hitting the target set for it. Maybe your experience was completely different. I suppose I’d feel better if it were just a mistake.

I wanted it to be a mistake. I really did. I tried it three more times after I was delivered the result above. Each one was the same. Maybe that was a mistake, too.

Consider where this is headed. AI Advertising that knows our desires, our memories, our aesthetic preferences. AI that uses all of it to manufacture moments where we’re the star (or worse, the hero), finally receiving what we’ve always wanted. What we deserve.

Is This What We Really Want?

Seriously, is this really what we want? Shouldn’t we at least have a conversation about this before we discover that the answer has already been decided for us?

Consider the conversation started.

---