BALENCIAGA
AI News Anchors, But Make it Fashion
Luxury fashion house Balenciaga released its Summer 2020 collection campaign video as an evening news broadcast, which was live streamed on Twitter. Directed by Will Benedict, everything about the video is slightly askew, and it’s brilliant.
The news presenters resemble AI anchors and virtual humans. But they’re intentionally not perfect replicas, tipping off the viewer to the satire and provoking unsettling feelings. With a nod to deep fakes, moving mouths are haphazardly superimposed atop the news anchors’ faces. It’s a cue that pulls you into the story.
Viewers in my social media network were quick to make comments about the technology not looking “believable”, how “the scale is off”, and the mouth movements “could have been mapped into a much smoother response.” Everything about this video is exaggerated to exactly ignite that response. We make these same busting observations daily across media, attempting to distinguish between what is a technical manipulation and what is real.
In 2018, I launched a wildly popular weekly game on Instagram called “Real or AR?” where players take a sharp eye to what is real and what is virtual. Balenciaga’s campaign video continues that guessing game as a cultural commentary.
Can you tell which news anchor is AI and which one is human?
Samsung recently introduced NEON, their cast of artificial humans, and in 2018, the world’s first AI news anchor (jointly developed by Xinhua News Agency and Chinese search engine company Sogou) debuted at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China. Can you tell which one is AI and which one is human? Answer revealed in the video below.
Balenciaga’s genius irreal newscast isn’t so far fetched; virtual humans are here. And yes, their mouths are better aligned.
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