Dublin Simon Community: Unfair City

Irish homelessness charity, Dublin Simon Community, is today, March 22nd, launching a brand film by using cutting edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology, in a first for Ireland. Created by advertising agency BBDO Dublin and New York-based production company Lobo, the film entitled UNFAIR CITY is one of the most advanced uses of the technology to date and will be used to highlight the growing inequality of homelessness as it hopes to raise much needed funds for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. This AI project was born out of a desire to find new ways of highlighting the country’s homelessness crisis, a problem that has been getting steadily worse every year. It has become more challenging for charities to illustrate the impact and complex issues around homelessness and to inspire the public to offer help as the issue spirals out of control. It is also becoming ever more difficult and challenging for those who are homeless to tell their stories. To help to increase levels of engagement, Dublin Simon deliberately utilised one of the most exciting areas of technology, Artificial Intelligence, to create a film that would garner wider interest and appeal to a new audience of younger more technologically minded donors. UNFAIR CITY tells the story of Justin Cannon. Formerly homeless, Justin now advocates and volunteers for Dublin Simon. Justin was interviewed and his story animated using AI image generators. In this sense, the AI imagery was created by Justin’s own words. The end result is a beautiful and moving film that feels true to Justin’s experience. It also shows how, almost counterintuitively, the use of AI can help make the telling of the story feel human and authentic by protecting the person’s dignity and privacy. While Justin has become comfortable telling his story, that is not the norm. It is hoped that the use of AI could be a way for more vulnerable people to tell their own stories in the future, while charities and organisations maintain and protect their anonymity and dignity. AI image generators work by learning from large troves of images. Users will give the AI prompts for what image they would like to create, then the AI will generate a completely new image based on what it has learned. For this reason, the film was created in the most ethical way possible. Although the images are created with AI technology, using tools such as Midjourney and Disco Diffusion, care was taken to work with artists in creating the overall effect. UNFAIR CITY was created in partnership with multi award-winning director Diogo Kalil of Lobo and illustrator Vini Bustamante. They helped to fill the context around Justin’s words and shape the visual style of the film. The images are presented in a water colour style. The unpolished brush strokes and abstract use of the images helped maintain humanity, while using AI. All work carried out by advertising agency, BBDO Dublin, director Diogo Kalil of Lobo and illustrator Vini Bustamante was completed on a pro-bono basis for Dublin Simon Community.