Toys”R”Us premiered a film made with OpenAI’s text-to-video artificial intelligence tool Sora at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival. “The Origin of Toys”R”Us” was produced by the company’s entertainment production division, Toys”R”Us Studios, and creative agency Native Foreign, which scored alpha access to Sora as OpenAI has not yet released it to the public. This makes Toys”R”Us one of the first brands to deploy the video AI tool on a large scale
“The Origin of Toys”R”Us” explores the early years of founder Charles Lazarus in a more whimsical way than retail giants typically portray. Company mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe appears to Lazarus in a dream to inspire his business ambitions in a way that suggests that huge profits were an unrelated side effect (at least until relatively recently) for Toys”R”Us.
“Charles Lazarus was a visionary ahead of his time and we wanted to honor his legacy with a place using the most advanced technology available,” four-time Emmy Award-winning producer and president of Toys “R” Us Studios Kim Miller Olko said in a statement. “Working with Native Foreign to push the boundaries of OpenAI’s Sora is truly exciting. Dreams are full of magic and endless possibilities, and so is Toys”R”Us.”
Sora Stories and the Uncanny Valley
Sora can generate videos of up to one minute from text prompts with realistic people and settings. OpenAI presents Sora as a way for production teams to bring their visions to life in a fraction of the usual time. The results can be breathtaking and bizarre.
For “The Origin of Toys”R”Us,” the filmmakers condensed hundreds of iterative shots into a few dozen, completing the film in weeks instead of months. That said, the producers did use some corrective visual effects and added original music composed by Copeland indie rock band Aaron Marsh.
The film is short and the AI’s origins only really become clear when it is paused. Otherwise you’d think it was just the victim of an overly enthusiastic editor with access to powerful visual effects software and actors who don’t know how to perform in front of a green screen.
Overall, it manages to avoid the uncanny valley for the most part, except when the young founder laughs, then it feels a little too much like watching ‘The Polar Express’. But when you consider that it was produced using the alpha version of Sora and with relatively limited time and resources, you can see why some are very enthusiastic about Sora.
“Sora allowed us to tell this incredible story with remarkable speed and efficiency,” said Native Foreign Chief Creative Officer and film director Nik Kleverov in a statement. “Toys”R”Us is the perfect brand to embrace this AI-forward strategy, and we are excited to work with their creative team to help lead the next wave of innovative storytelling.”
The debut of “The Origin of Toys”R”Us” at the Cannes Lions Festival underlines the growing importance of AI tools in advertising and branding. The film acts as a new proof of concept for Sora. And it can predict many more generative AI-enabled movies in the future. That said, there is a lot of skepticism and resistance in the entertainment world. Writers and actors have been on strike for a long time in part because of generative AI, and the new contracts include rules about how companies can use AI models. The world premiere of a film written by ChatGPT had to be canceled outright due to complaints about that aspect, and if Toys “R” Us tried to make its film available in theaters it would likely face the same backlash.