A toy store chain has just published the first advertising spot created with Sora: realism is left halfway

Sora is not yet available to the general public, but some people have access to it. alpha version of the tool for a long time. Nik Kleverov, the creative director of an agency called Native Foreign, is one of them, and this week he presented a work done together with Toys”R”Us Studios.

We are talking about the first advertising spot created with Sora. According to a press releasethe audiovisual content of just over a minute tells a story about the founder of the American toy store chain Toys”R”Us, Charles Lazarus, and how he came up with the brand’s mascot, Geoffrey the giraffe.

An AI-generated short for Toys”R”Us

The short, released for the first time during the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival, begins by showing a bicycle shop in a quiet neighborhood in the 1930s. There are vintage cars parked around, next to leafy trees. Little Charles falls asleep and falls into a deep sleep.

Suddenly, he finds himself in a magical world with all kinds of toys floating around, but one especially stands out: Geoffrey the giraffe, who has big eyes and stars drawn on his long neck. The mascot gives a toy car to Charles as a gift in his fantasy world decorated with shiny stars.

The short closes with a real photo of Charles Lazarus next to the giraffe and another photo of Geoffrey in front of a Macy’s store. Certainly, each viewer will be able to draw their own conclusions from the work, which can be seen in full on the creative studio pagebut we could deduce that realism has been left halfway.

The full short film can be viewed on the Toys”R”Us website

We do not know if this is the product of a decision by the filmmakers or, on the contrary, is due to the limitations of the tool, remember, in alpha version. In any case, the most notable thing is the lack of naturalness in some of the characters’ movements, and the obvious feeling that we are facing synthetic scenes.

Geoffrey the giraffe in the Toys”R”Us short

OpenAI describes Sora as a tool that can generate “realistic and imaginative” scenes from textual prompts. That is, apart from differences, it is the same mechanics that image generators such as DALL·E and Midjourney have. And we’ve seen some pretty impressive demonstrations..

It took Toys”R”Us Studios and Native Foreign “a few weeks” to create the promotional short film. Those responsible assure that it was created almost entirely with Sora, although they added some corrective visual effects. The music, for its part, was composed by Aaron Marsh of the indie rock band Copeland.

Certainly, we have to continue waiting to see the final version of the tool and, apparently, its full potential. For now, it should be noted, this is not the only alternative on the horizon. In recent months, alternatives such as Vidu, Veo,
Dream Machine and Runway Gen-3 Alpha.

Images | Toys”R”Us | Native Foreign

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