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Toys “R” Us released a video made with a new artificial intelligence tool at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, but not everyone wants to be a Toys “R” Us-AI kid. The toy merchant it said in a statement that this is the brand’s first video created using Sora, which is a text-to-video tool from ChatGPT creator of OpenAI. Sora isn’t publicly available yet, but the company got special early access.
The 1-minute AI-generated video shows a young boy representing Charles Lazarus, the late founder of Toys “R” Us. He falls asleep and wakes up in a dream world filled with toys of all kinds, including an animated version of the store’s mascot, Jeffrey the Giraffe. Shown is an imagined version of the store’s I Wanna Be a Toys ‘R’ Us Kid jingle and a photo of the real Lazarus posing with a costumed version of Jeffrey.
A teaser was released on YouTube, but you should go to Toys “R” Us Studios site to watch the entire video.
Toys “R” Us closed its last US stores in 2021, but later opened toy departments inside Macy’s Department Storeskeeping the nostalgic name alive.
But some now-grown Toys “R” Us kids weren’t comfortable with their childhood icon diving into the world of artificial intelligence.
More than 9,500 people liked a I tweet to X from writer and comedian Mike Drucker, who wrote, “I love (that) this ad is like Toys R Us started with the dream of a little boy who wanted to share his imagination with the world.” And to show how, we fired our artists and we drained Lake Superior using a server farm to generate what it would look like in Stephen King’s nightmares.”
Videos, music and dialogue using AI continue to spark controversy in the entertainment world, with concerns ranging from fears that AI will replace human workers to how easy it is to pass off AI images or sounds as real. Sometimes the reaction to AI is positive, like in 2023 when former Beatle Paul McCartney said an AI program was used to extract the late John Lennon’s voice from an old tape to make what has been called the last Beatles song.
But last month, Sony Music Group and its affiliates spoke out against it using music from its artists to train AI systems. A song that used AI to imitate singers Drake and The Weeknd was is up for two Grammy Awards in 2023, forcing the Academy of Music to hastily set rules regarding AI and its awards. And singer Taylor Swift and President Joe Biden are among those who have done so their voices were imitated from people trying to cheat others. Every new venture into the world of artificial intelligence seems to bring more questions, and with the brand known as Toys “R” Us, a backlash seemed inevitable.
“We wouldn’t hire a giraffe”
When asked NBC News on criticism about AI’s potential to replace human workers, Toys “R” Us Studios president Kim Miller Olko said there is a lot of “fear” about AI. Miller Olko said about a dozen people worked on the video over three months, the same amount of people who would work at a job without AI.
“Jeffrey is animation. He’s an animated movie,” Miller Olko told NBC. “We weren’t going to hire a giraffe, you know what I mean? It was animation.”
Representatives for Toys “R” Us and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
What is Sora?
“Sora” means sky in Japanese, and like CNET’s Connie Guglielmo wrote in FebruaryThe AI tool has gained attention for the photorealistic videos it can create.
“Sora is capable of generating complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of movement, and accurate object and background detail,” the company says on its website. “The model understands not only what the user asked for in the prompt, but how those things exist in the physical world.”
Open AI also says on its site that the company is building tools to help detect misleading content, such as a detection classifier that can tell when a video was generated by Sora, and plans to include C2PA metadata to show that Sora is used in an OpenAI product.
For more AI news, tips, and reviews, check out CNET AI atlas hub.
Editor’s note: CNET used an AI engine to help create several dozen stories that were labeled accordingly. The note you’re reading is attached to articles that deal essentially with the topic of AI, but were created entirely by our expert editors and writers. For more see our AI Policy.
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