Lexus films first ad written by AI

The Japanese carmaker Lexus has made an advert that has been entirely scripted using artificial intelligence (AI).

Driven by Intuition was shot by Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald, but the content was the result of data crunching from Watson, the question-answering computer system developed by IBM.

Watson took 15 years of award-winning ads for luxury products and distilled the components down to the vital ingredients that would make up the ‘perfect ad’.
Macdonald was initially skeptical that the computer could come up with a cohesive narrative that would make sense, thinking that it would need to be rewritten, but what is seen in the 60-second film is what the AI produced.

He added in an interview with Techradar: “It was an interesting experiment, which is why I did it, one of the first things written by a computer. The thing that struck me most was the AI had written a script about being a machine that’s trying to come alive. It was quite surreal.”