Staffers at McCann Erickson Japan in Tokyo recently met their new colleague: AI-CD? The concept was sparked by an idea at South by Southwest, and data-driven success stories -- including Netflix's and Buzzfeed's approaches in creating targeted original content -- helped to trigger the development of AI-CD beta. To set AI-CD beta apart as an advertising prodigy (albeit, a robotic one), it initially analyzed and categorized the winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commercial Confederation annual CM Festival for the past 10 years, which celebrates creative excellence in TV advertising in Japan. Depending on the creative challenge, it mines patterns including how weather, location or current events have affected an existing campaign, or how related commercials have performed historically on YouTube. This logic-based direction then results in a targeted strategy for a product or brand, which is actually written out using a brush attached to a robotic arm.

AI-CD beta will work for McCann Japan and was developed through the "Creative Genome Project," the first project undertaken by McCann Millennials, a taskforce launched last September by agency employees in many an advertiser's dream demographic. "Artificial intelligence is already being used to create a wide variety of entertainment, including music, movies, and TV drama, so we're very enthusiastic about the potential of AI-CD ß for the future of ad creation," said Yasuyuki Katagi, president & CEO of McCann Japan. "The whole company is 100 percent on board to support the development of our A.I. employee." AI-CD beta took six months to create and test and will write the creative direction for commercials on a piece of paper with a brush attached to its robot arm. When developing the A.I., the Millennials team deconstructed, analyzed and tagged 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.