• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

As if the creative advertising TV community wasn’t worried enough, the NBA Finals -- a major sports TV event -- witnessed its first AI-generated advertising spot, produced with some help from Google Gemini, its AI tech group. 

The basic Google Gemini was originally designed to perform tasks such as writing, brainstorming, summarizing and generating images. 

Now with Google Veo 3 -- launched last month -- it added in an AI video-generation model that produced a buzz -- and a loud, fan-centric commercial to spin NBA action excitement including images of the individual fans loudly talking and screaming for their favorite NBA Finals teams, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers.

The ad was for Kalshi, a  federally regulated exchange that allows trading on the outcome of future events -- including political elections, economic indicators, sports, and more.

While text-to-video AI models have been around for a while, the difference here is that Veo 3 can place realistic looking, lip-synced, spoken dialogue onto people and around big time cinematic video.

CNBC says this is the start of how advertising can be more fully disrupted -- with no actors, no location shoots, and no sound stage. 

Should TV viewers be alerted to this -- especially in the spot where a small, shirtless Pacers fan holding a dog exposes his not-so-appealing physique?

Does that guy really exist?

Consumers are probably well aware these days that certain images and short videos on mobile devices could be artificially produced and manipulated.

Now more than ever, we need to assume that some big-screen images -- especially in places where we don’t expect them -- could be revealed through AI technology.

If that isn’t enough, high-profile AI executive and CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman now says AI may already have surpassed human intelligence.

But can it drive downhill to the basket, and hit the big three to win the game with two seconds to go.. and then yell -- boo-yah?

Oh yeah. But not in real life.

Humans love excitement. AI already knows that.