A New Zealand telecommunications company has become the first in the world to clone a real customer to feature in its ads.
Liz from Kerikeri – or rather her Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated clone – will be the face and voice of Skinny for the next two years.
The 65-year-old has handed over her biometric data willingly and, for the past two months, the company has been capturing elements of Liz, Skinny marketing and data director Matt Bains told RNZ’s Checkpoint.
“Her likeness, her voice and her mannerisms and then we have used various AI platforms to then replicate that, so when she’s not with us here at Spark and Skinny, she can still decorate it for us.”
He said in the advertising, it is clear that Liz has been created with AI.
“In theory, a new person couldn’t tell, I guess her family definitely would. But we think this is an opportunity to educate the country around what’s possible with AI, but make it clear that it is AI.
“On our TV ad for example, we have a clear call out that this was created using AI just to make sure there’s no confusion.”
Using AI means they can have more creativity than Skinny has had in the past, he said.
“What we loved about this is we still get to use a real human that loves the Skinny brand. But the AI capability gives us more flexibility.”
He said hundreds of people applied to be made into a digital client for Skinny.
“They submitted videos to us, it was a competition and we had a lot of great applicants and Liz was the fortunate winner.”
He said using AI means the company is able to keep prices down for its customers, he said.
“Usually we’re limited in how much we can do creatively and also in terms of the number of campaigns. This gives us the opportunity to stay true to Skinny’s brand, which is about low prices and keeping costs down for our customers.”
Liz is involved in the ongoing process, he said.
“She has the final say. If there was something that she wasn’t happy with and was against, we wouldn’t go with that. She’s gonna be a spokesperson for us both as a real person and as an AI clone.”
Skinny has strict principles on how it can use Liz’s data and if after two years it decided to not continue with Liz, it would have to destroy her data, he said.
“There’s standard talent contracts, which don’t usually allow for this level of likeness being used. So we had to make sure that we work with legal specialists to ensure that we’re doing this done the right way to protect ourselves and Liz.
“It would be terrible if the data got into the wrong hands, our security teams have been involved to make sure there is no possibility of data leakage and we don’t store her data anywhere where it could be captured by third parties.”
He said Skinny wanted to use a real person, to help tell a story.
“We felt that we could tell a really great story around how we’ve taken one of our happiest customers and made them able to do things they couldn’t necessarily do if they weren’t an AI clone.”
rnz.co.nz
