David Raichman
Interview
With a provocative expansion of a Vermeer masterpiece for Nestlé, Ogilvy Paris announced that AI (artificial intelligence) was more than ready to make a big impact on advertising creativity. But it gets a lot more disturbing than that, as we discover in talking with the agency’s Executive Creative Director David Raichman. He explains why and how we must embrace working with AI as a creative partner.
L[A] In recent months AI has emerged as an incredibly exciting and disruptive force in creative work. You have stood out as both a keen practitioner and a commissioner of AI work. Can you introduce us to how you have this personal interest as a creative director and as an artist?
DR I was a street photographer in the past, for more than 10 years. Photography was part of my artistic activity. In recent months I saw the rise of something new that can only be made today. We are seeing a new form of art. Photography came about in the nineteenth century… but now AI, this new form of art, is going very fast. It’s evolving almost every day. It has all the conditions of a real art in that it has things that can be democratized in that many artists can use it and make their own style. All the conditions are there to see something major happening in the next couple of years. My bet is that this going to be something totally new. It is a little crazy, what we are witnessing.
The Louvre Hidden Collection
Egyptian Department
At the beginning, photography was also a very technical art, which means you need to master a lot of techniques, such as how to capture light well, how to make something interesting. In the later 1800s, photography was so creative and also as technical. There were so many forms of expression. We’re not there yet in AI. We are at the point where everything needs to be explored. We are experimenting as much as we can. We are pioneers. People are generating millions of images daily on the key platforms, for example, DALL-E. It’s like a force that you can’t stop.
Of course, there are copyright, regulatory, legal issues. We are all aware about that but the possibilities are so huge that you can’t stop.
L[A] What legal issues are involved?
DR For sure, there are legal aspects that will be fixed. There are issues such as how to ensure you are not using some imagery by living artists in the database. These questions will be addressed in the future and I’m not really worried about that. It’s not for everyone now because there are still some technical aspects to solve. When you want to master it, you need to go deeply into technical elements. But it’s really changing our culture of creation.
L[A] How is it working in the agency? Obviously, one can experiment out there on DALL-E, or Midjourney, or whatever AI platform you prefer. But in the actual life of the agency or the creative teams, for individual creatives on their projects, how are you starting to see that come through?
DR I was something of an ambassador for all the creatives here at Ogilvy Paris. I started to teach them how to use AI. For example, on social media, they start to use it more in their production flow, which is fine. It’s more of a hybrid world. It’s not cutting one thing out, it is bringing new possibilities. AI is not the answer to everything. If we think about AI, it is best to think about what we are trying to do that was not possible before. If it’s something that was possible before then probably AI is not a good creative answer to your brief.
AI should not be everywhere. It’s like photography. You cannot use photography everywhere in terms of expression. I want to ensure that when it’s relevant when it’s strong, our creatives have the right reflex to use AI.
The Milkmaid
More than a thousand text prompts drove the AI expansion of Vermeer’s iconic image The Milkmaid, created for Nestlé’s La Laitiere yogurt brand
L[A] We see some creatives using AI as a tool of visualization and exploration, trying to see potential things that we cannot see or get to by talking or drawing. Is that how it works with you?
DR Definitely. Our creatives here can use it as an ideation tool to help them visualize concepts. It can help but sometimes it can make you go too far and you lose yourself a bit. I’m saying there is a wise usage of it. When I say wise, not so much ethical, I mean more creatively speaking. Yes, it can unleash and unlock new ways of visualization but first you need to be clear in your mind about what you want to visualize.
L[A] Besides ideation and creating a visual, do you foresee us working within a more complete experience that is highly AI-supported? The games development world is perhaps already starting to do that but could we see a broader highly immersive AI encounter for other creatives to work within? What comes next?
Brutalist’ Moulin Rouge
Mental Street Photography
DR For me, what comes next are all the fields of filmmaking.
You see the research that is going on with video, creating the conditions for a future that likely will happen in only a few months. The creative industry and the researchers behind us, the scientists, we all have in mind a dream. The dream of writing a script, describing exactly a scenario of a film, describing all the scenes second by second, and giving that to AI to generate a film. This is what’s going to happen. Not sure it will be all film but this is the most exciting field we have.
There are already early projects and we can expect to see TV shows and movies generated with AI. I tried some music videos with artists using AI and probably I will do a big one very soon. It is a little tough for just anyone to make it, technically speaking. You really need to go into the cut. For example, you need to train the AI to recognize the face of somebody if you want to have somebody in a music video because if you are not well-known, if you are not Snoop Dogg, the AI will not recognize you. So you need to train the AI. But this is one of the most exciting areas for the entertainment world.
It will also happen in other fields like architecture, fashion. Any day now, you can imagine the launch of the first AI-generated fashion line or brand. What comes next is how this very experimental stuff will spread broadly into culture. We are just seeing now the early stage but AI will go into culture and become mainstream very, very quickly. I think before the end of next year we may start to see some usage of it everywhere.
In the past, we were talking of virtual worlds, the metaverse, etc. Thanks to AI, we will be able to create and populate these worlds quickly, easily. It’s revolutionizing almost everything.
This feature is from Lurzer’s Archive Volume 03/2022
L[A] In the work that you’re doing, what are the most immediate steps that you see there? Within the work for Nestlé you’ve made this particular application, the extended Milkmaid painting by Vermeer. That brought a lot of attention. What’s next?
DR We continue exploring the possibilities and we are very keen to work with some clients and to propose new ideas that leverage AI. It’s almost an everyday duty for all the creative department. But as I said earlier, we don’t want to use it just for the technology. We want to use it and find good application, because what is exciting, creatively speaking, for an agency, is that it’s not totally into today’s culture. We have to find what we call a societal role for this, a useful role in the work with this technology – for goods, for brands – and find a new way to make this much more meaningful.
This is a relentless effort for us at the agency. It’s not a one-off, for us it is more a beginning.
DAVID ON HIS MENTAL STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
“I’ve trained AI to allow me to shoot with an abstract camera. For more than 10 years, I’ve practiced street photography. My encounter with generative AI was like a big bang! Suddenly, I can travel in my mind to any location or event in the world that I’ve ever dreamed of (imaginary or real) to shoot. Using text prompt, I describe to the AI, in exact detail: the place, the context, the people, the emotions I want. I am then precise to the AI about the angle of the camera, the lens, the aperture, the shutter speed, the film I would use. It is as if I were actually on location, behind my camera. And by combining my photographic style with other styles, I even discover new realities.”
Protest march, 1960s New York
Mental Street Photography
Tibetan Temple
Mental Street Photography
David’s AI primer
1: Be prepared to work hard and open Pandora’s box (the time will fly)
2: Be demanding with yourself, master the AI. If you don’t decide, the AI will decide for you.
3: Improve your creative possibilities: combine your skills with AI (3D, illustration, photography, etc.)
4: Understand how AI Generators work with this video
5: Search for inspiration with text prompts at openart.ai and libraire.ai
6: Master the art of prompt scripting with visual help and reference with phraser.tech and promptomania.com
7: Follow Olivio Sarikas to stay on top of the latest evolution and techniques for AI creation (everything changes almost every day!)
8: Be curious and try experimental stuff with replicate.com
9: You usually need to pay to use AI but you can get free access to Stable Diffusion (an open source AI generator) by installing it locally on your Mac. diffusionbee.com
10: Be inspired with these AI videos
David Raichman is Executive Creative Director / Social & Digital and Experience Creative Lead EMEA at Ogilvy Paris.
