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A stream of people showing up to a brightly lit front porch, each holding up a bottle of wine, spirits, or beer.
This cozy winter scene depicted in a new advertisement for N.B. Liquor encourages customers to stock up for the holidays.
But none of the smiling people, or the bottles of alcohol they are holding, are real.
The ad was made with artificial intelligence. And now N.B. Liquor is catching enough heat for the video campaign that a government minister directed them to take the ad down.
A spokesperson for N.B. Liquor said in an emailed statement that the use of AI came down to trying to manage costs.
The minister responsible for the Crown corporation asked them to pull the ad while they talk about the future use of generative artificial intelligence.
“AI didn’t replace our team or our creative direction – our concept, story and standards still guided the entire process,” Florence Gouton wrote.
“It helped us experiment with a different technique, much like we do with animation or other creative approaches.”
Luke Randall, the minister responsible for N.B. Liquor, told reporters that he asked the Crown corporation to pause the ad once he was made aware of it.
While he said the government is hesitant to “meddle” with N.B. Liquor, “I was hearing from New Brunswickers that this was a concern.”
Randall described AI use as an “ongoing national issue” and said he asked N.B. Liquor to have a conversation about their use of AI.
“It is always the intent of this government … to be supporting local,” Randall said, but he would not say, when pressed by reporters, if he asked N.B. Liquor not to use AI in commercials anymore.
The ad was not received well by Pierre-Luc Arseneau, a freelance filmmaker and graphic artist from New Brunswick, who worked on a Christmas commercial for N.B. Liquor last year.
“It’s something to lose a contract to somebody that’s creating better stuff than you are. But it’s something else to lose a contract to generative AI,” Arseneau said in an interview with CBC Radio’s Shift.
Arseneau said it’s immediately obvious that the ad is made with AI.
“The bottles had some gibberish writing on it, the background looked a little funky, the lighting didn’t make sense at all. The people were acting a bit weird, moving weird,” he said.
The winter months are usually slower for professionals in his line of work, Arsenault said, so having a gig like he did last year for N.B. Liquor makes a big difference.
“I have colleagues that are already looking at different job opportunities, colleagues that have totally quit the industry because they don’t want any part of it,” Arseneau said about AI.
“But this was a bit scary to know because we all know that it’s inevitable.”
Felt confused, then angry and sad
University of New Brunswick film professor Robert Gray also had several concerns about the video. He described it as “creatively insulting.”
“One [reason] is that it’s not employing New Brunswick artists and that our current government has talked a lot about the status of the artist,” Gray said.
The use of AI for this particular video makes the ad look like something that could have been aired anywhere in the world and has no real connection to New Brunswick, he said.
“It’s got the lowest amount of impact and the lowest amount of anything. Like there’s no story to it,” he said.
“I went from confusion to anger to kind of just feeling really sad that there are so many talented artists that they could [have] instantly hired and come up with something better.”
In addition, Gray said that New Brunswick is a place where people rarely, if ever, see themselves reflected on screens. This ad, he said, was a missed opportunity for that.
