AI increasingly being used in advertising, leads to lower costs but also harbors risks

Images created using artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly being used in advertising, says Daan Odijk, Head of Data and AI at RTL. This reduces costs considerably but also harbors risks such as a lack of representativeness and a blurred line between fake and real.

For example, an advertising image at the beginning of the dating show B&B Vol Liefde was created with the help of AI applications. The viewer sees couples in love having a drink on a terrace, but in the ad, no photo shoot was involved. "In this example, we were able to significantly reduce production costs because we didn't have to fly to three locations around the world with a crew and actors," said Odijk.

When producing these types of ads, RTL had to deal with the fact that the people created by the AI are not always representative. "An AI model is, of course, trained and often optimized to look as pretty as possible, often in the direction of photo shoots and photo models. But, of course, that's not the reality as we see it. It's difficult to get people who don't look like a photo model," Odijk explained.

Lotte Willemsen, Director of the Foundation for Scientific Research in Commercial Communication, explains that AI is increasingly finding its way into the advertising industry. "It is estimated that the production of advertising could become ten to twenty times cheaper through the use of AI," she said. However, Willemsen also warns that if AI is trained with unrepresentative data, it could lead to creative content that is "biased" and mainly shows "white men or women with a certain beauty ideal."

There is also a risk that "the line between real and fake becomes blurred," argues Willemsen, for example, when virtual influencers promote products. In her opinion, consumers could then buy products that they would not have purchased if they knew that a specific image or text came from an artificial intelligence. It is, therefore, essential that the role of AI in advertising is transparent, she concluded.

There are no specific rules on the use of AI in advertising, said a spokeswoman for the Advertising Code Committee. However, the committee has not yet received any complaints about AI deception.

Odijk emphasized that RTL is reluctant to use AI applications. Nevertheless, he believes that they are used relatively loosely in advertising. "When people see an advertisement, they don't expect it to correspond to reality fully."