Nearly a fortnight before the country’s first-ever International GenAI Conclave organised jointly by the Kerala State government and IBM got underway in Kochi on July 11, a novel campaign hit the public domain, including on social media.
The aesthetically designed campaign revolved around a common theme – AI for the People – and had a set of four characters drawn from different walks of local citizenry – Josettan, a common man seeking services from a local body; Ramankutty, a farmer; Usha Chechi, a tailor, and Minimol, a budding entrepreneur.
The characters and their backdrops looked so earthly that it deceived even experienced photographers who mistook it for original photographs of real people. Only, they were AI-generated.
“AI is generally perceived as highly technical, complicated and intimidating and often associated with job loss. We wanted to demystify and democratise the whole concept by linking it to local people and livelihood. Hence, the campaign slogan ‘AI for the People,” said Shelton Pinheiro, creative director of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Stark Communications which designed the ad campaign.
Earlier, creating figures with features of Keralites was a tough task as the relevant software used for image creation mostly threw up north-Indian faces for prompts for Indian features. Also, the imagery associated with India was rather “poverty-heavy.”
“Now, with Indian users on the rise, the algorithm returns more specific features such as that of South Indians on proper prompt. But even then, with the ever-increasing volume of data, even the very same prompt may not necessarily return the same results,” said Mr. Pinheiro.
Accurate prompting can be aided in multiple ways, including by uploading reference images. The backdrop can also be accurately generated by including minute specifics and camera attributes in the prompt. With the advent of third-party software that facilitate upscaling by increasing the number of pixels, now even big outdoor images can be generated using AI, which was not the case before. The availability of more refined software has made differentiating between real and AI-generated images even more difficult, which brings its own problems in its wake.
So, what is the guarantee that the four AI-generated figures do not resemble real people somewhere? While that possibility cannot be ruled out entirely, the argument is that AI generates images by “scouring and scrubbing” millions of photographs on the Internet and hence that possibility remains remote, he said.
The campaign concept was an instant hit with the Industries department and IBM. “The idea was to generate curiosity around the campaign, which seems to have worked. We have also received from the delegates very positive feedback about the campaign materials placed at the venue and along the way,” Mr. Pinheiro said.
