• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 24, 2024

Famed toy retailer Toys"R"Us this morning released what it is touting as the "first-ever brand film" using OpenAI's text-to-video tool Sora, but readers of this column actually got to preview some of it -- albeit a typographically incorrect one -- even before it was a gleam in the eye of a Big Idea.

If you watch the just-released Toys"R"Us spot above, you'll hear the story about how a bicycle store owner's son was the inspiration for the retail chain, including a nostalgic, AI-generated "Bicycle Shop," but you would have seen a version spelled "Biycle Repaich" in my April 23 column featuring an interview with Sora beta tester Native Foreign Chief Creative Officer Nick Kleverov.

"It's very simple to replace or update text," Kleverov said back then, noting, "I think it's fine. Creating this shot before [Sora] would have taken a lot more work."

You can see my interview with Kleverov below, but in it, I suggested that AI-generated advertising and branded content should purposely have "tells" like incorrect type to provide an uncanny valley that lets consumers know they aren't watching something generated by the real world.