Toys “R” Us Annoys Critics With “First-Ever” AI-Generated Ad Using Sora

On Monday, Toys “R” Us announced that it had partnered with an ad agency called Native Foreign to create what it calls “the first-ever branded film using OpenAI’s new text-to-video conversion tool , Sora.” OpenAI launched Sora in February, but the video synthesis tool is not yet available to the public. The brand’s film tells the story of Toys “R” Us founder Charles Lazarus using AI-generated video clips.

“We are excited to partner with Native Foreign to push the boundaries of Sora, a revolutionary new technology from OpenAI that is capturing global attention,” Toys “R” Us wrote on its website. “Sora can create videos of up to one minute featuring realistic scenes and multiple characters, all generated from text instructions. Imagine the excitement of creating a young Charles Lazarus, the founder of Toys “R” Us, and d ‘imagining his dreams for our iconic brand and beloved mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe in the early 1930s.’

The company says that The origin of Toys “R” Us The commercial was co-produced by Kim Miller Olko, president of Toys “R” Us Studios, as executive producer and Native Foreign’s Nik Kleverov as director. “Charles Lazarus was a visionary ahead of his time, and we wanted to honor his legacy with a spot using the most cutting-edge technology available,” Miller said. Olko said in a statement.

In the video, we see a child version of Lazarus, presumably generated using Sora, falling asleep and dreaming that he is flying through a land of toys. On the way, he meets Geoffery, the store’s mascot, who hands the child a little red car.

Many scenes retain obvious characteristics of AI-generated images, such as unnatural movements, strange visual artifacts, and the irregular shape of glasses. In February, a few Super Bowl commercials intentionally mocked similar AI-generated video flaws, which became famous online after fake AI-generated beer commercials and “Pepperoni Hug Spot” clips made at using Runway’s Gen-2 model went viral in 2023.

AI-generated artwork is the subject of frequent criticism online due to the use of human-created artwork to train AI models that create the artwork, from perception that AI synthesis tools will replace (or are replacing) human creative jobs and the potential environmental impact of these works. AI models, considered a waste of energy by some critics. Additionally, some people just think that the quality of the result looks bad.

On the social network who wanted to share their imagination with the world. And to show how, we laid off our artists and dried up Lake Superior using a server farm to generate what it would look like in Stephen King’s nightmares.'”

Other critical comments were more blunt. Filmmaker Joe Russo posted: “TOYS ‘R US released an AI commercial and it really sucks.”