How to Make AI Your Creative Superpower: The Playbook with Nik Kleverov

Welcome to AdSe Week's podcast about the business of marketing, media, and creativity. In this episode, we're sharing a conversation recorded live at one of AdWeek's events featuring leaders from across the industry discussing the ideas shaping brands right now. Let's get into it. As the creative officer of this brand storytelling creative agency, you know, um my job is to kind of usher in what's happening with AI. We started in a pre-AI world actually and and we started doing brain storytelling for startups to Fortune 100s, kind of everything in between. My favorite startup that we've worked with is a little company called Open AI and you know working with them funny enough a lot of the work we do for them is actually documentary. It's in the documentary space and we got we were one of the first creative agencies to really be working with them and they gave us access to some tools in 2022. I was playing with a tool called Dolly which actually predated Midjourney. It predated Chad GPT and it was a text to video tool. When playing with I was like man we could actually probably use this tool for storytelling. So we convinced Open AI to fund a short film called Critters. You just saw a little blip of it. And Critters was kind of a David Admiral Planet Earth crashing into a Monty Python sketch. And in an era where all the AI demo videos coming out were like dystopian sci-fi futures, we made this cute little irreverent fun family thing that was very successful in the sense that it went to a lot of festivals. It was nominated for and won a bunch of awards, including a PGA innovation award. And what we kind of learned from that is, wow, like we can actually use these tools to do anything. and being in with open uh when they decided to go multimodal I was invited as one of the first seven people in the world uh to use Sora their texttovideo tool obviously when that came out it was a really big deal people's minds exploded uh they called us the Sora 7 as if we went to the moon or something and uh you know everyone's films were great friends with all of them there's like a lot of very interesting artful films I decided to take the lane of the brand world being a bit of an ad guy myself. That's what I do every day. And also advertising is always pushing innovation and we're able to tell these short stories and all innovation in in film making really happens from advertising for the last half century or more. And I wanted to find a partner that was meaningful, had that legacy, but also nimble enough to move with us and partner with us cuz I wanted to make a real piece. Everyone in here knows it's very different to make something by yourself or for fun versus with a client partner. And that partner was Toys R Us. Fantastic partner that, you know, we were able to come together and we were able to do the origin story of Jeffrey the Giraffe. Charles Lazarus falls asleep in his dad's bike shop. He wakes up, you know, he sees Jeffrey and and the rest is history. Uh, of course, it was very hard to make that with text video. This was pre-image upload tools. You know, try typing out an anthropomorphic giraffe with yellow, you know, brown stars instead of stripes. I mean, it was chaos making the piece truly. But we learned a lot and we also kind of established ourselves as a leader and pioneer in the AI space. Since then, a lot of the work we do is more of the AI nature, although we do still pick up cameras and and shoot things every now and then. Um, being here in Atlanta, I'll mention, you know, we work with Coca-Cola, we work with Delta, as you saw there. We were part of the Delta Centennial Celebration at the Sphere this year, which was really exciting. being a bit of a Delta fanboy myself and uh thirdyear diamond it was uh very fun to and by the way like real like not on Delta 1 like I'm putting in the work I'm putting in the hours I'm flying so you know you're welcome Delta um but you know working with them we did this beautiful film with Bola Davis Han Zimmer that was live action but we also used AI to explore what the future of flight would look like through the eyes of kids and then we would play that back to the kids and you see that wonderment so to me it's always about keeping that human in the loop and human element in everything we do. The little short film I mentioned that we did prior is now becoming one of the first AI feature films. It's the only film being backed by OpenAI and you know we're really excited to have that ready next year. We are going to also explore other expressions of IP and that's you know obviously storytelling comes in many forms. So I'm also very interested in what the future will bring and how we interact with IP. So that's me in a nutshell. Um, thanks for joining me for this AMA. I've got some questions here. So, I'm guessing these are from you all in the audience. So, I'll I'll get through these really quickly here. Um, number one, when you created the first AIdriven brand film for Toys R Us, what did that moment tell you about where creativity is headed? I'll say this, and this is the first time I'm reading these, so these are not planned answers. Um, I had become a bit of a jaded kind of like business guy. You know, being a partner at our our agency, you know, I think about the bottom line. you know, I have to do a bunch of boring stuff. And I've been really creatively invigorated in the last couple years. Like, I'm back on the box. I'm on the system. I'm doing things. And I will say that I think that the AI tools, I'm very optimistic. If you can tell about them, I think they're going to help creatives really dive in and be able to tell stories that they weren't able to tell before. Cuz that's what what I've been able to do. My dad was a famous artist in Soviet Russia. He painted for the freedom, you know, he fought for the freedom to paint. The KGB was not very into that. Uh, a lot of his friends fell in front of subway trains and he was actually arrested and spent uh some time in jail uh being a political prisoner and you know, we came to America for freedom and to do all this stuff. Anyway, I have this this whole song idea and I did the spoken word thing about like trying to visualize that through the POV of my dad's eyes set in 1960s Soviet Russia. There's no way in hell I would have ever been able to make something like that. But now I was able to sit down and plug away at this like personal project to tell that story, to visualize it. And it actually won best music video at LA International Short Film Festival, a festival running of 30 years. That's like an Oscar qualifier. And it was not an AI festival, just a festival. So I think we're we're starting to see that merge of what's AI versus not. Like we're all storytellers. So it doesn't matter. It's create by any means necessary. How can you make something? use whatever tools you have and and make them. Uh, number two, how's your creative process evolved since integrating AI into visual storytelling? I think I probably just touched on that a little bit, but it's much more malleable. I don't think there's the pre-production is the production is the post-production. My hot take is that editors are the new directors. And I'm not just saying that because I came up as an editor, but you know, you sit at your control tower and you're kind of plugging in pieces and you have to make things and refine them as you go. So, it's a much less structured process, but I think it's a much more creative one. What do you think scares creatives most about AI and what excites the most? Yeah, I've lost many friendships over my stance and position at AI. Friends of 20 plus years that just won't talk to me anymore. And I think a lot of people are really worried about their jobs and I get it and I'm empathetic to that. I do also think though that we are exiting the age of very highly specialized specialists that can only do one thing. I think generalists that have big ideas or can deliver um you know I've always been of the shipping beats perfection mindset. You know you have to deliver and you have to make something are going to really win in this AI age. I think that um you know it's tricky if you're a lighting tech and that's all you've done for 30 years. It's hard to say okay well what what am I supposed to do now? I will say that some of the best DPS I'm working with now for live action shoots. They're like hey look I actually prevised out this whole thing ahead of time and so we can actually see what the lighting is going to look like. So it's not it's additive in that sense. It's not replacing. It's actually saying okay great. Yes. And I'll give you another example. On the Critters film, which we're creating now, one of the storyboard artists, and yes, we're storyboarding the whole thing, worked on the 1996 Space Jam. And you know, he came in, he's like, I don't know about all this AI stuff, and I'm just here to do my boards and I'm out of here. Two weeks later, he's like, "Wow, this actually kind of cool. Like, I can do this and I can do this and I can make that faster." So, I think there's I see the hesitation, but I think with every creative I talk to that starts using the tools and using it to supplement what they do, they're they're seeing pretty incredible results. How does visual AI differ from generative AI in practice when it comes to campaign work? So, we previs everything now. You're kind of almost making the commercial before you make the commercial. And we are using AI tools for that obviously. Um, we're also doing that though for campaign work and and a lot of the stuff we're doing is finished frame. We just finished a campaign for Virgin Voyages. They have four ships. Each ship is personified by a mermaid. They've been wanting to do this story about their mermaids for a long time. This would cost millions and millions and millions of dollars. But we were able to create a brand storytelling system where we identified each story line of each mermaid based on the places that ship goes and created a system that's malleable and they can create all sorts of stuff with and it the expressions go into all parts of their business which is is really fun. But I think there's no clear line to to divide it. Um what are the most promising use cases for visual AI in branded storytelling today? Uh, I've see a lot of small brands and startups kind of diving in. Obviously, there's a little bit of less less red tape to do. Although, I think, you know, with us, what we did with Toys R Us and then Coca-Cola that followed shortly after, I do think kind of opened it up for brands to embrace it. We're also able to offer indemnity to our partners because we work in a walled garden which means data that's put in isn't being used to train the models and we're able to guarantee that nothing else was you know referenced that wouldn't want to be referenced and I think a lot of companies like ours are are doing that now because it's the only way to kind of keep moving forward. Let's see we got some more questions. How do you decide when to use AI versus traditional production methods? When I was creating the Toys R Us piece and I just wanted this kid to like stand up and walk, it took hundreds of generations to try to make that happen and I was just beating my head against the wall saying like, I wish I could just pick up a camera and just do this. So, in some cases, it doesn't make any sense. In some cases, it's a conversation between two people at a coffee shop. Just make it that. There's no reason. What really annoys me is actually when people just try to make things AI for no reason, it's like, well, we got to do it at AI. It's like, well, why? This creative doesn't call for it. On the other hand, if you're able to tell a story you weren't able to tell before because of AI, I think that's fantastic. And that is what AI should be used for. What is authorship mean in a world where AI helps generate imagery and ideas? That's a great question because we achieved the first ever copyright for an AI short film and that was for the original critter short partly thanks to our legal firm Perkins Kuey. Big shout out. But it is because we kept really great detailed track of the human authorship that went into each piece. And that is what we're doing with our feature expression critters as well. We have humans in the loop at every point. And I think that's actually critical when people talk about like, "Oh my god, I just used chat to write all the scripts and I'm going to make 10,000, you know, shampoo commercials and I'm going to just flood the internet." Like, that's disgusting to me. I I think that's horrible. That's not the kind of brand storytelling I like to do. I like to really connect with people, make human stories, and sure, we're using the tools to do so, but it doesn't mean it just needs to be this like ugly floodgate of from hell. How can v a visual AI expand representation or diversity in storytelling? This is also a great question because the first versions of these tools, you know, we would literally upload a picture of an African-American person or of an Asian person and they would like become white halfway through the cliff. I was like, "What the hell is happening? This is insane." I think all the tool companies realize that and started to have to, you know, augment the data that they're using and really fix that. And I think we're getting better and getting close. And I think that, you know, different types of bodies, different types of faces and people are starting to be represented. I think it's the job of the tool providers and also the job of the storytellers to make sure that we're handling that. Uh, how are clients reacting to AI generated creative? Are they skeptical or inspired? It's a mixed bag. I mean, you know, some clients love it. Some clients are like, "Do not touch AI with a 10-ft pole." It is interesting because I I think at the heart of all AI generated creative, good ones anyway, is is still the the humans and the humanity that we're driving the ship. And so, I think there's still a lot of legal hesitation and we are finding kind of a 50/50 split with our client partners on this. How do you ensure transparency with audiences when a campaign uses AI generated visuals? That's an interesting question. Right now there are still, you know, generated by AI made by AI watermarks. I do think that in the next 5 years it's not going to matter. And I think in the next 5 years saying you used AI is going to be saying like I used Photoshop to make this and be like okay so what who cares? That is the world we're headed. That opens up a whole different discussion which is and those of you that have seen Sora 2 and how realistic and lifelike it looks now I think we're very soon entering that age where you know 90 to 95% of all content photos videos made are made with AI and then it's like well how do you know what's real and as the father of a young kid I'm already starting to talk to him about like okay well this is real this is not real here's what AI can do and I do think that actually opens up a whole different discussion of I think this is where blockchain is going to work because if we have cameras that can geo tag and timestamp things that's written to a public blockchain that can be verified, that's actually going to be a way where we know if things are real or not. Um, but I can nerd out about that later. I've got a bunch more questions to get through. What are some misconceptions about AI creativity that you'd like to clear up? Um, the AI slop thing I see thrown out a lot on things that is AI slop and is not actually AI slop. Uh, it's the really easy term to throw out if you just don't like AI. But I can always tell when something is done with thought, with purpose, and, you know, not unlike the way we've been creating for a long time. I actually came up doing main title sequences. The one that most of you would probably be familiar with that I'm famous for is is Narcos. And, you know, when you're doing a title sequence, you're distilling the themes or ideas of a series, a show, a movie down into a minute or 30 seconds or less. And it's this process that's really exciting because you have to get it's kind of like commercial storytelling. You have to tell a story in a short amount of time. You get to be artful. You get to use design while doing it. And one thing we've gotten really good at is doing those. It's always a team of like 12 people. It's creative director, art director, some designers, some animators. You got edit, post, sound, VFX, cleanup. That's the team that it takes to do an AI piece. So when I transition into the AI, I was like, I know this workflow. This is easy. like this is exactly what we've been doing. It's these small really concentrated teams that can bat above their weight because of the tools. Um what new roles or skills are emerging on creative teams because of visual AI? I would say definitely AI artists and within that there are those that create images. There are those that are great at workflows. There are th those that are great at making images move. Interestingly enough, it's a there are different specialties within the AI world and people that are good at some things might be less good at others and vice versa. But what's interesting is we're kind of seeing talent come from everywhere. One of our best AI artists was a fine painter who's a fine artist before. And uh you know, it's funny actually on some of the negative comments that that come up online, he'll go in and he'll be like, "How could you say this is an art when I'm an artist?" And I was like, "Dude, you got to calm down. You can't you can't get in the comment section on this stuff. But I will say it's gotten better over time, right? Toys R Us came with so many death threats and Bible verses sent to me. Now it's mostly like poop jokes and stuff. So I think there's a lot of progress happening in in the AI world. Um what does collaboration look like between human directors, designers, and AI systems? We are still collaborating. I think great things happen when we're in a room together. We do have a global team because we're in the talent business of finding the best AI artists and bringing them together. But it's the same amazing process and that is why I'm so optimistic and hopeful because we've actually hired so many more people since the AI stuff has started. We're doing more jobs. The jobs go quicker. There's more opportunities in general. Um I'll try to get I've I'll try to get through a few more questions here. How do you maintain emotional resonance when parts of the story are machine generated? That is a great question and I would say liveaction based things are still the furthest away. There's there's that uncanny valley and you've heard it before and you'll hear it again. As as good as this stuff gets, it's still not quite there. I think once we pass that barrier, it it'll be something. But you still need great data and input imagery. For example, we recently did a piece for Carbone when they were opening in London and, you know, the restaurant wasn't built yet, which is a to me the perfect case for AI. You know, we were able to take 3D renders and go there and kind of bring it to life in a new way. But even to do that, we had to go to Carbon in New York. We had to take photos of Mario and the team. We had to do scans. I of course had to try some of the food because, you know, I can't do stuff that I'm I don't know about. So, I had to do the spicy rig. guy that gets a mistake, you know. Um, and in that sense, it's still very collaborative situation where you're able to try to bring that humanity forward. And I will say also animation, you're asking people to suspend their disbelief and go on a journey with you. So, that is why we're doing so many animated projects right now. It's just the tools are further along in that realm. Um, I've got more questions, but I've also only got 10 seconds left on the clock. So, uh, thank you very much. Really appreciate you all. Uh, I'm around. I'm Nick Cleveroff from the Foreign. Thank you guys. >> That was a conversation recorded live at an AdWeek event. You can find more coverage, analysis, and interviews from across the marketing and media world at adweek.com. Thanks for listening to Adspeak. 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