AI Roundup: Toys R Us banks on publicity, not its commercial

Jobs aren't going anywhere

A child in amazement looking over the deli counter for the first time. It should clearly show deli meats in their wrappers and meat slicer in the background. The picture should be from the perspective of the person working behind the counter. Leonardo AI. I don’t allow images of humans with 10 fingers on this blog.

As you may have seen, Toys R Us recently released a commercial generated by AI.

1. We go so far out of our way to avoid commercials the fact that we now go voluntarily watch them is kind of bizarre.

2. On some level, this is exactly what Toys R Us is banking on. There are only some many brands that pull on that nostalgia string that we would voluntarily subject ourselves to advertising even if we know that advertising is bad.

3. What is bad advertising anyway? No one is competing for some Emmy for commercials. We watch this commercial because most of us are desperate to hear that the happiest place of our childhoods is somehow returning to its glory instead of being beaten further into the ground by soulless internet retail stores.

4. I agree with critics about the commercial itself. It is weird. But I only notice these things because I know what AI stuff looks like. Would someone not familiar with AI generated footage realize something was weird? I’m not sure. In that sense, I think it is pretty good.

5. Other people are obviously tweeting that AI is inherently bad because it just removed the jobs of a million camera operators and actors (not true) and that AI uses stolen material (probably true) and that it hurts the environment (and a million camera operators and actors has no impact at all, obviously). To this I say that Toys R Us would not have made this commercial if it had the resources to do all those things. Also, they used a ton of post-production so camerapeople, read up on your postproduction skills.

6. Toys R Us bet on a bad commercial. Imagine if it was indiscernible from real-life cinematography. Ok, in 2024 that might still make headlines (less and less so) but bad content from famous brands will always pay dividends! No one goes out of their way to shop 6 tiny aisles in a Macy’s and doing so will never return that feel of being surrounded by shelves 20 ft high (in reality they were probably normal shelves but when you’re 6 everything looks super tall, like the deli counter. I remember the first time I could see over that and I was like, whoa, meat slicers!) filled with toys you would never have or never afford (how do I get money as a 6 year old???) so what is there to lose with a bad commercial?

One non-sequitur sentence: paying almost $1 billion to bring down the International Space Station is insane.