The Person in the Ad Does Not Exist

I can usually feel it before I can explain what is wrong. A person in a video ad looks into the camera, smiles at the right moment, and seems to be enjoying the product. The hands may look perfectly normal. Still, I want to scroll away.

I hate that kind of ad. Some of these videos make me dislike the brand selling to me. That is a strong reaction, especially because I have been experimenting with AI video myself.

I understand the appeal from the maker's side. You can imagine a scene and see something close to it move in front of you. There is a real wow in that. I have felt it. But the person watching the finished ad does not get the thrill of making it. They have to decide what to believe about the person on the screen.

This is where I keep getting stuck. AI video can make a face look more convincing. It cannot give that face a real experience with your product. If the video is made to resemble something a customer recorded on their phone, the borrowed intimacy is doing the selling. I am being shown the shape of a recommendation without the person who could actually make one.

Recently I saw the trailer for You Can See Everything, the documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. One look on her face made me deeply uncomfortable. I am not making a judgment about her inner life from a trailer, and I am certainly not equating a generated ad with what that documentary is about. I am trying to name a feeling: someone appears to be asking for my trust, while something in me pulls back. That is the closest comparison I have for the feeling I get from some synthetic people in sales videos.

I know that “soulless” is a slippery word. I am not talking about fingers or a glitch in the eyes. It is the gap between the emotion being performed and the human experience I am meant to believe is behind it. The more polished the performance becomes, the more noticeable that gap can feel to me.

An artwork made with AI asks me to enter an imagined world. A video showing off what the technology can do is interesting on its own terms. Even an ordinary ad can use an actor without pretending that actor is a customer. What bothers me is the version that tries to look like everyday customer footage: someone apparently using a product, enjoying it, and speaking as though the reaction came from their own life. If that person and experience were generated, what exactly am I being asked to trust?

I have seen negative comments under AI video ads, and I suspect I am not the only one reacting this way. But I cannot say how widespread that reaction is or whether it affects sales. I can only tell you that my own reaction is strong enough that I would want to know about it if I were the founder running the ad.

For our work, I can imagine AI video adding to a piece: perhaps someone walking through a scene, or a shot of oil going into a pair of hands. Those are possibilities I am still thinking through, not a line I have already solved. Even the oil shot raises a question. Is it helping someone feel the atmosphere of a routine? Or does it look like a demonstration of how our actual product behaves when nobody filmed that happening?

I do not want to throw away a useful creative tool. I also do not want the excitement of making something convincing to become an excuse for making up a person's experience. Those impulses are uncomfortably close together when the technology makes both so easy. Used thoughtfully, however, it can augment our creative powers by helping us explore possibilities, refine ideas, and express what we could not have produced alone.

Maybe future AI video will feel different. Maybe I will change my mind about some of these uses as I keep experimenting. For now, I know where I would pause: a synthetic person made to pass as a real customer is not a harmless shortcut to me. It makes me wonder what else the brand is willing to fake.

Before I make the next video, I want to ask a harder question than “Can people tell it is AI?” What will they think really happened here? And would I be comfortable telling them how the scene was made?