McCann Japan introduces world's first robot creative director

Robots taking over the workplace has become reality.

McCann Erickson Japan is upping its artificial intelligence game by creating and naming the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) creative director.

Named AI-CD β, the AI bot was developed through the “Creative Genome Project”, one of the first projects undertaken by McCANN MILLENNIALS, an innovative task force that was launched last September by members of the agency’s millennial generation.

Effective on 1 April, AI-CD β will be assigned as a creative director to client accounts and will provide creative direction for commercials as per creative briefs.

Until now, the production of commercials has been dependent on the intangible experience and know-how of human creators.

While artificial intelligence is taking over some of the work done by human, reporting to a robot boss instead of a human boss is something that is not unacceptable as most would have imagined.

One in three employees ARE open to the idea of working with a robot boss, according to a survey of more than 2000 people by Vancouver-based consulting firm Intensions.

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34% said they would rather be hired by an “unbiased” computer program, 33% would prefer to be assessed, and 26%% said they would prefer to be managed by a robot.

AI-CD β is artificial intelligence that is able to give creative direction for commercials.

To develop the A.I., the MILLENNIALS team deconstructed, analysed and tagged a wide range of TV commercials, including the winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commercial Confederation’s annual CM Festival (ACC CM Festival) awards for the past 10 years. The A.I. is designed to mine the Festival’s database and creatively direct the optimal commercial for any given product or message.

With the AI-CD β, it will become possible to provide clients with work produced through logic-based creative direction grounded on past TV commercial data.

Shun Matsuzaka, creative planner at McCann Japan and the founder of McCANN MILLENNIALS, said: “Our team didn’t have a creative director, so we thought, why not create one ourselves with artificial intelligence? That’s how the Creative Genome Project got started.

This article was originally published in Marketing Interactive.

Image: Provided