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- Today we're talking to Stefan Pretoria,

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the Chief Technology Officer at WPP,

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the largest advertising
company in the world about

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what AI is gonna look
like in the future of ads.

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What is AI gonna be useful for
in the world of advertising?

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Because I don't think that's

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something that people think about.

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- Yeah, it's, it, it's an
interesting phenomenon, right?

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Because we, we've been making
work using AI techniques,

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style transfer, gans,
things like that since 2016.

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We did a project for RNG Bank
in the Netherlands called the

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Next Rembrandt, where we created
a fictitious new Rembrandt

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painting using style transfer,

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and then actually printed
it on a 3D canvas.

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And it was fantastic This 2016, right?

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I mean, that's seven years ago. And,

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and ever since we've been
investing heavily in research

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and, you know, innovation around how

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to use AI in marketing and advertising.

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Today, the, the time from design

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to having cars in consumers
hands with EVs is now 18 months.

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Now 18 months is not enough
time to produce the car,

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create demand, and have
it in consumer's hands.

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So what we now have to do is we have

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to create demand without
having the product.

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So our clients send us
the, the car drawings,

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the engineering drawings of the
cars, we render them the 3D,

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we create these beautiful
moving, you know, sort of films,

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configurators, all these kind of things.

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And then we are now using
generative AI for the,

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the backgrounds and, and then, and sets.

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So we don't have to, you know,
we don't have to use a kind

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of a, you know, do a lot of shoots

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and then import, you
know, files, et cetera.

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So you can now, within a couple

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of weeks from a car design
being signed off, have a,

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a fully high fidelity like
cinema quality, you know, sort

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of, you know, video of a car
driving through any environment

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that you want with any configuration
of that car, being able

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to select that in real time

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and stream it through a gaming network.

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That's a very industry specific solution.

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But, but the reality is, is that for,

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for almost every category,

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there's something like that, right?

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- You know, and advertising
has always presented this kind

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of weird simulacrum of reality
with like airbrushed and,

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but now we're getting to a
place where it, it eventually,

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like, why would you use a camera Yeah.

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To make an ad. You, you're not
gonna need to do that. Yeah.

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What, what is that gonna be like?

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Like have you thought about
like the, the strange reality

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that that's gonna create when
advertising is completely

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disconnected from the physical world,

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- You're dealing with things

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that live in a three-dimensional
space that are experienced,

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visualized, and treated in
three-dimensional space with

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lighting and camera angles
and substances and surfaces.

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I mean, it's, it's very real.

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I mean, it's very, it's
incredibly tangible, you know,

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even though obviously you can't touch it,

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but I mean, it's conceptually
incredibly tangible

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and it uses techniques
from the real world, right?

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I mean, so compression physics, you know,

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kind of textures things.

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I mean, I mean, the, the
amount of time I've spent,

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you know, working

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with my team on getting
car tire compression right

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through CG is insane getting dust, right.

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With three cg. Wow. Yeah, I
can imagine. Because it's like,

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- People notice,
- You can feel it,

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people notice and it matters, right?

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I mean, if the, if the tires
float, it doesn't look real.

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Yeah. They have to compress, they have to,

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you know, sort of churn up. It

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- Takes too long to slow down
when the car's breaking, you

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- Know?

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So you see all these like,
wonderful renders, you know, kind

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of on, on social media and
you go like, fantastic.

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Now make it move. Yeah, that's hard.

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But it's so, you know, think about,

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about the process of representation.

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I mean, I think, you know,
putting a product in a studio

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with beautiful lighting and,
you know, sort of objects

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and so on, and then doing
a lot of work to, to take,

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you know, high definition photography

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or slow motion, you know, milk
dropping into a, you know,

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I mean, it, this is also fantasy, right?

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In a way, I mean, the
techniques were just more

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physical than, than virtual.

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I think it's sort of in the realm of,

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of imagination as well, right?

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As is any kind of, you know, film director

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or photographer, right?

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So I don't think it's
necessarily the problem

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philosophically and from
a a creative perspective,

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what I do think is interesting
is that it actually

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expands the, the canvas,

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it expands the creative
canvas massively, you know,

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so it solves business problems
like the car configurator

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problem I, I I described,

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but it also creates like entirely new

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conceptual possibilities.

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I've been working with Nike for many years

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and they, they, they just did
a campaign this year where

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the concept was they wanna
celebrate their relationship

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with Serena Williams who said, you know,

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we've been waning Serena for 25 years

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and we wanna do something that,

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that celebrates our relationship with her.

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And so this creative team came
up with this idea of like,

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who do you think is the better player?

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Serena today was? Serena at 18.

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And then someone said, well,
why don't we just test it?

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Why don't we just do it?

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And I'm like, well, how do you do that?

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And the guy goes, well, I
know this guy who, you know,

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can simulate tennis
players into AI agents,

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and if we take enough
footage of Serena at 18, as

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of enough footage of Serena today,

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we can have effectively two
Serenas play against each other,

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and we can see who will win.

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Right? And they did that, right?

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And then it became, it became
a film, it became a whole lot

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of, you know, content went
into socials, whatever.

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But it's, you think about
that as an idea, right?

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It's like, it's an
impossible idea 10 years ago.

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You can't, you can't simulate that idea.

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You can't actually test that, right?

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The whole idea of like a, you
know, an AI agent, you know,

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trained on a playing style of a,

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of an athlete at a certain
point in their career.

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I mean, it's like insane
idea, right? Yeah. It's weird.

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And we did it. That's what, that's

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what these technique
techniques are starting

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to, to do, right?

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We, we were able to express
entirely new, entirely

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expanded kind of creative concepts.