-: The Donkey Who Wanted to be a Reindeer

Digital innovation agency Rehab has created the world’s first Christmas advert solely leveraging AI tools end-to-end. The 129 second film, which tells the story of a donkey who wants to be a reindeer, was generated using a myriad of cutting-edge AI tools that produced everything from storylines and scripts to final visual assets and audio. Devised as part of Rehab’s regular Hackweeks, which challenge its multidisciplinary team to experiment and innovate using the latest in emerging technology, the piece took just five days to complete from start to finish. What’s more, some of the team that produced the advert hadn’t used any of the AI platforms before, so learning how they work was part of the creative process. The team - which was made up of product strategists, designers and innovators - started by giving an AI the ‘persona’ of a creative director who specialises in making Christmas adverts, before briefing it to devise festive scripts. The eventual storyline charts the story of a donkey called Bob who wants to be a reindeer, and is brought to life via a computer-generated narration to accompany the AI-generated imagery and audio.