AI Just Made The Most Disturbing Pizza Commercial Ever
An AI-generated pseudo-pizza commercial is horrifying.
Contrary to popular opinion, AI software has been around for decades and has been featured in a number of feature films from Will Smith’s I, Robot to Harrison Ford’s Blade Runner. The popularization of AI software is currently blossoming, with the use of software like ChatGPT becoming more widespread among the masses. Now, according to a recent Twitter post, one user has used AI to create a pizza commercial, and it certainly is saucy.
A Twitter user named Pizza Later shared their AI-generated pizza commercial for a fictional restaurant called Pepperoni Hug Spot along with the caption “Definitely wasted 3 hours of my life making this today… Everything is AI from the VO to the video and images. Assembled in After Effects. More info below.”
They followed it up with a full breakdown of the AI used:
“Full breakdown:
Script – #GPT4
Images – #Midjourney
Video Clips – Runway #Gen2
VO – Eleven Labs
Music – SOUNDRAW AI Music
Generated all the assets and then spent the better part of my afternoon assembling in AE with graphics etc..
The future is wild!”
The pizza commercial’s AI-generated narration delivers some real magic with lines like “Knock knock. Who’s there? Pizza magic,” “your tummy say thank you. Your mouth say ‘mmmm’,” and the pièce de résistance branding tagline “It’s like family, but with more cheese.”
While at first glance it may seem innocuous, upon further review this pizza commercial is full of some real oddities. Mouths stretch and contort inhumanly wide like the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise as they smile and attempt to eat their pizza.
One image from the pizza commercial shows a family eating what looks like plates of food but when analyzed the food is some mismatch of texture that could be anything from a pizza, to a sandwich, a quesadilla, or a cake. During another pizza-making scene, the chef is pouring what appears to be liquid cheese from a pizza dough and at another point, they seem to be using a pommel to smush the toppings directly on an uncooked pizza.
Towards the end of the pizza commercial, a woman is seen enjoying a slice of pizza, but what she’s actually eating is the plate, not the pizza. Another woman with a cartoonishly large mouth enjoys what seems to be a mashup between a pizza and a taco. Another family laughs while enjoying what appears to be a double-decker pizza with only tomato sauce and no toppings.
The pizza commercial certainly has some bizarre moments, but one thing that the AI gets spot-on is the commercial format, which certainly has a familiar feel. The ad mimics the retro style of pizza commercials from the 80s and 90s, and to the unfocused eye and ear hits on all of the right notes. In fact, if it were playing in the background, many people might not notice that something is wrong with this pizza commercial.
Commercials can be quite expensive productions, and the possibility of using AI could mean cutting down on production costs. This one shows that AI is beginning to get there, and it’s only when actually being watched and dissected that this AI-generated pizza commercial starts to fall apart like an overstuffed calzone. Like Star Wars’ iconic droid C3PO, there are still some glitches.
The pizza commercial endeavor shows that AI is probably still a long way from creating effective and convincing commercials by itself. Or, at least, creating ones that aren’t quite so terrifying.
