OneDoor Studios CMO Dan Cobb discusses the adaption of the YA series'Calculated.' A Hollywood film studio is leveraging a new real-time design and artist development process to adapt a popular young adult (YA) series, including an industry-first application of artificial intelligence (AI) that gives fans and artists active input in creating character design, sets and special effects. Dan Cobb, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of OneDoor Studios, said development is underway on "Calculated," an adaption of the YA sci-fi series by Nova McBee. On a mission to become the "World's First Fan-Funded and Fan-Created Film Studio," Cobb and his team have developed a relationship with AI artists on the WeGo.One's Discord channel. The artists, who are required to have deep knowledge of the source material, liaise with investors and the author to spawn images using MidJourney V5 Pro and a combination of other similar generative image technologies to build the film's storyboard, enhance concept art and develop shot lists.

Music artists can find inspiration and new creative directions for their song writing with technology developed by Waterloo researchers. LyricJam, a real-time system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate lyric lines for live instrumental music, was created by members of the University's Natural Language Processing Lab. The lab, led by Olga Vechtomova, a Waterloo Engineering professor cross-appointed in Computer Science, has been researching creative applications of AI for several years. The lab's initial work led to the creation of a system that learns musical expressions of artists and generates lyrics in their style. Recently, Vechtomova, along with Waterloo graduate students Gaurav Sahu and Dhruv Kumar, developed technology that relies on various aspects of music such as chord progressions, tempo and instrumentation to synthesize lyrics reflecting the mood and emotions expressed by live music.

This year has been a pivotal one for artificial intelligence, which has gone from an abstract and esoteric concept understood primarily through it's portrayal in sci-fi movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Terminator series (no wonder it's typically regarded as malevolent) to the centre-piece of todays zeitgeist as the singularity (the point when artificial intelligence becomes indistinguishable from human) draws near. Hyper personalisation and proactive intelligence have become expectations of software in 2016, and the big players in mobile and digital are striving for this through AI. The result is that we're tipping into another fundamental paradigm shift akin to the explosion of mobile. Let's take a look at some of the best of AI in 2016 and what we can expect in 2017 and beyond for industry, creativity and humanity. Greek mythology talks about mechanical humans, robots and artificial intelligences and it was all the way back in 1951 that the first AI capable of playing chess was shown off courtesy of the university of Manchester.

The Drum's latest documentary, produced in association with Teads, 'The Automation of Creativity' explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in advertising. Automation will claim 50% of all jobs in the next 30 years, according to Rice University professor Moshe Vardi, but creativity is impossible to automate, right? Adland will surely escape this robot advance? Such a binary argument fails to take into account the huge leaps artificial intelligence (AI) and other such technologies are making. Why, when it is being used in film-making, music and even journalism, should advertising avoid the onslaught?

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.

McCann has appointed an artificial intelligence creative director AI-CD?, who will be attending McCann Worldgroup's new employee welcoming ceremony on April 1, along with 11 new college graduates. AI-CD? was actually created by the agency under its'Creative Genome Project', the first in a series of projects undertaken by the agency's'McCann Millenials taskforce'. The artificial intelligence can give creative direction on commercials because the data that forms the basis of the algorithm includes deconstructed, tagged and analysed TV shows, as well as data on the winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commersion Confederation's CM Festival. President & CEO of McCann Japan, Yasuyuki Katagi said: "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. The whole company is 100 percent on board to support the development of our A.I. employee."

Today in Press Releases That Should Be Taken Very Seriously, McCann Japan has finally turned the wildest dreams of holding company executives into reality by automating the creative director role. The AI CD will, in fact, attend the Tokyo office's new employee welcoming ceremony on April 1st along with 11 recent college grads who have also joined the McCann team. And yes, that date is pure coincidence. "AI-CD? is artificial intelligence that is able to give creative direction for commercials." Until now, the production of commercials has been dependent on the intangible experience and know-how of human creators." According to McCann's Japanese office, a team called McCANN MILLENNIALS (of course) developed this full-service replacement for your least favorite creative director. These clever whippersnappers analyzed and "deconstructed" a whole bunch of ads including "the winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commercial Confederation's annual CM Festival (ACC CM Festival) awards for the past 10 years" in order to give the robot a database from which it can best determine which factors make the perfect ad for "any given product or message." The release calls the resulting process "logic-based creative direction," and we can imagine Sir Martin Sorrell salivating. It's not a stretch to imagine AI-CD making ads for certain categories like, say, auto that are actually better than most of the stuff on TV. "Our team didn't have a creative director, so we thought, why not create one ourselves with artificial intelligence?

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.

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?, the AI bot was developed through the "Creative Genome Project", one of the first projects undertaken by McCANN MILLENNIALS, an innovative taskforce that was launched last September by members of the agency's millennial generation. AI-CD? 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.

Flickr/Peyri HerreraAn artificial intelligence director (not this robot, but you get the idea.) Ad agency McCann Japan has appointed an artificial intelligence creative director, AI-CD?, who will be attending McCann Worldgroup's new employee welcoming ceremony on April 1, along with 11 new college graduates. AI-CD? was actually created by the agency under its'Creative Genome Project', the first in a series of projects undertaken by the agency's'McCann Millennials taskforce'. The artificial intelligence can give creative direction on commercials because the data that forms the basis of the algorithm includes deconstructed, tagged and analysed TV shows, as well as data on the winners of the All Japan Radio & Television Commersion Confederation's CM Festival. President & CEO of McCann Japan, Yasuyuki Katagi said: "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. The whole company is 100 percent on board to support the development of our A.I. employee."