Jeep recently launched an advertising campaign leveraging artificial intelligence-generated imagery.
The marketing tactic stands to save companies time and money.
Experts compared ethical concerns about AI usage to concerns that arose during the advent of technologies like the internet, television and photo-editing software.
A bear leans in the window of the Jeep Grand Cherokee while a woman holding a microphone asks the bear a question. The woman’s mouth does not quite sync with the words she is delivering. Then, the bear starts talking.
Something is amiss.
The opening scene of Jeep’s artificial intelligence-generated advertisement may look real to some and uncanny to others. Regardless, it has generated millions of views on social media.
The video is part of Jeep’s recent move to go all in on artificial intelligence, being one of the first (and largest) automotive companies to use AI-generated visuals on a large scale for an advertising campaign. In Jeep’s latest social media advertisements, featuring things as unbelievable as talking animals or simple renderings of the Grand Cherokee evolving over time, AI-generated visuals are leading the way. The ads were developed in collaboration with Highdive Studios, a high-profile ad agency from Chicago.
The use of AI can be controversial, with critics leveling that assigning creative work — such as advertising a pair of dancing squirrels — to a trained computer algorithm can take a potential job opportunity away from a human being.
Coca-Cola, for example, faced backlash in 2024 for using AI-generated visuals in its holiday-themed ad campaign, with detractors claiming it was lifeless and full of glitchy inconsistencies.
Jeep, on the other hand, is not turning people away by using AI. In fact, experts who spoke to the Free Press said Jeep’s use of AI is worth praising — and Stellantis’ top marketing boss said he will keep on using the technology.
Experts: We like it
Jonas Wagner, a partner and managing director in the automotive and industrial practice at global consulting firm AlixPartners, said that automotive companies should have started using AI visuals to market their products yesterday.
Generative AI models like Chat GPT, Sora AI or Google’s Veo 3 are “at the core of marketing” nowadays, said Wagner, who said he has spoken to advertising agencies that have been “blown away by what AI can do.”
The technology, if used instead of animators, actors, directors and camera operators, stands to save marketing firms and companies some money, Wagner said.
The consulting firm Wagner works for recently published a study that found consumer-facing AI technology — meaning things like customer-serving chatbots and AI-powered marketing campaigns — could save more than $7 billion yearly for automotive companies across the industry.
In terms of marketing, the report reads,
