Will AI generate a decent commercial before 2025?
55
1.2kṀ13k
resolved Jan 1
Resolved
NO

Note: This is an effort to make relatively objective, transparent Manifold markets that predict AI capabilities. I won't trade in these markets because there will inevitably be some subjectivity, and I'll try to be responsive with clarifications in the comments (which I will add to the market description). Feedback welcome.

Specifications:

  1. By "decent," I mean that a serious large-sized company would plausibly pay market price to run it for at least 30 seconds in a normal TV context. Ideally, a company will actually run it, but it's okay if the commercial doesn't run but clearly could be (e.g., the company just puts it on YouTube but never pays for TV placement).

  2. There is no restriction on the type of commercial. It can be funny, serious, animated, silent, abstract, etc. Ideally the YES case would be made by showing the AI-generated commercial alongside several comparable human commercials, but that's not required. The easiest examples I have in mind are perfume commercials.

  3. The commercial should not merely succeed because an AI made it. It should be good enough to plausibly be aired if humans made it. Ideally, the commercial would run on TV before it's widely known to be AI-generated, but that seems unlikely and certainly isn't required.

  4. By "generate," I mean the entire commercial should be produced without human intervention (e.g., collating AI clips, adding a soundtrack, adding logos), but humans can select the best AI-generated commercials. The AI system doesn't need to exclusively take text instructions as input, but other specific content should be limited to what's necessary (e.g., a logo, high-resolution images from multiple angles of the product being advertised). The commercial needs to match a real company (e.g., a real logo and product).

  5. If enough details about how the video was made aren't publicly available, I'll take my best guess (i.e., over 50% chance it met each criterion). I will probably consult other AI researchers or engineers if this is contentious.

The spirit of this market (which will be used to resolve ambiguities that aren't resolved by explicit criteria) is whether the AI is capable enough to do all the different tasks it takes to produce a commercial, such as not just generating individual video shots but sequencing them together in a compelling way.

Get
Ṁ1,000
to start trading!

🏅 Top traders

#NameTotal profit
1Ṁ1,660
2Ṁ1,193
3Ṁ147
4Ṁ104
5Ṁ73


Sort by:
1mo

Anyone want to make a case for YES? Even an abstract, artsy perfume commercial would work, and "it's okay if the commercial doesn't run but clearly could be (e.g., the company just puts it on YouTube but never pays for TV placement)."

1mo

@Jacy The best case I know of is Coca-Cola’s holiday commercial. It is not clear how much human involvement there was, but it seems like it probably involved stringing together / editing AI-generated clips and adding additional text at the end, which would make it ineligible. But they did make it, and test it successfully, and actually run it in major markets.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSTupbfGog

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-ads-can-look-weird-brands-like-coca-cola-are-making-them-anyway-04331697

1mo

@CharlesFoster good find! I hadn't seen it, and I agree that's the best case I've seen but doesn't meet the criteria for this market in part because it very likely involved a ton of human editing and a human soundtrack. There is also the earlier (and worse, IMO) Toys R Us commercial.

opened a Ṁ111 YES at 61% order9mo

The only real question is: "Will someone generate a commercial?" The technology is already there.

10mo

#4: Is a human voiceover allowed? E.g. "Perfume, by Calvin Klein" (humans may act this better than bots)

bought Ṁ10 YES1y

Burger King has an AI Whopper commercial maker that produces a 15 second advertisement that takes the toppings you want on your Whopper, generates an image of it, and then synthesizes that image, a very good, generated voice that speaks your name, and a canned soundtrack.

1y

Does it resolve YES if such commercial airs or just the demonstration of ability is enough? Sora definitely seems to be capable of making a commercial of something vague like perfume, but I'm not sure if any big company will use it this year.

1y

@ProjectVictory In particular, the description doesn't limit the number of attempts - it seems plausible that one out of 1,000 attempts should be good enough (even if Sora doesn't do sound yet).

1y

serious large-sized company

Can you clarify this? Like, would the top 1,000 US companies count, or more like top 1,000,000? Market cap of >$10b, or more like >$10m? Employee count >100, or >100,000?

1y

@JonasVollmer I'm not sure—perhaps the top 2,000 global companies by revenue, as long as they have over 10,000 employees. I don't know the distribution of companies running TV commercials, but the motivation here is to exclude exceptionally risk-taking companies that would run weird commercials that wouldn't reflect the ability of an AI to create commercials in general (e.g., abstract, disconnected sounds and visuals for 25 seconds followed by the corporate logo for 5 seconds). I'm okay with perfume commercials, despite their abstractness, because that actually is a big chunk of the market.

I think this is also reason to allow cases where the commercial is made for a real company even if the company does not meet these criteria (e.g., X/Twitter has a few hundred full-time employees) as long as it seems that a company that does meet these criteria (e.g., Meta) would run the commercial if it featured their platform instead. The aim is to approximate quality based on which, if any, companies would run the commercial, rather than to forecast corporate choices (e.g., algorithm aversion, union opposition).

1y

Nonsense market.

“30 second commercial on TV”. I don’t know if we live in the same world because i have never seen such a long commercial.

And also not a single company in the world would run an unedited ai generated commercial. Why do this if editing costs pennies?

1y

I think point 4 is not realistic - even if AI can generate an excellent commercial, there will be human intervention for the final product, even if it's just some final touches / simple cuts / audio / color correction/ etc.

What is this?

What is Manifold?
Manifold is the world's largest social prediction market.
Get accurate real-time odds on politics, tech, sports, and more.
Or create your own play-money betting market on any question you care about.
Are our predictions accurate?
Yes! Manifold is very well calibrated, with forecasts on average within 4 percentage points of the true probability. Our probabilities are created by users buying and selling shares of a market.
In the 2022 US midterm elections, we outperformed all other prediction market platforms and were in line with FiveThirtyEight’s performance. Many people who don't like betting still use Manifold to get reliable news.
ṀWhy use play money?
Mana (Ṁ) is the play-money currency used to bet on Manifold. It cannot be converted to cash. All users start with Ṁ1,000 for free.
Play money means it's much easier for anyone anywhere in the world to get started and try out forecasting without any risk. It also means there's more freedom to create and bet on any type of question.
© Manifold Markets, Inc.Terms + Mana-only TermsPrivacyRules