EY leverages AI to show ‘Faces of the Future’

‘This is the face of EY.ai,’ says the opening face. Moments later, a series of different faces concludes: “The face of the future, of people augmented and enhanced by AI.”

The faces are accompanied by unique voices, each sourced from the recording of a single voice actor and, like the images, generated by AI.

The one-year campaign, created in collaboration with Ogilvy UK and Hogarth Worldwide, launches today with the release of a 30-second cut. It will deploy across TV, out-of-home, social media and other channels.

The need to create “human-centric” AI (as it’s often described) has become a common refrain among business leaders and marketers as the technology continues to advance rapidly, threatening to push some professionals out of the job market – or even, as some have warned, escaping our control and leading to civilization-scale catastrophe.

Some experts – including many who spoke onstage at the recent Advertising Week New York conference – have begun to call for an approach to AI that prioritizes the enhancement of human creativity instead of its replacement.

The faces in EY’s new video look more like moving cubist paintings than the hyper-realistic, AI-generated deepfakes that have been popping up across the internet with increasing frequency over recent months. Created by an AI algorithm using 200 photographs of actual EY employees from around the world, the morphing series of faces is meant to portray a representative sample of humanity. It’s haloed by neon visual technobabble: Matrix-like cascades of data, unlabelled graphs, geometrical designs and so forth.

EY collaborated with several agencies to produce and execute the content-rich integrated campaign led by creative director Graham Fink of FinkDifferent.

“Our creative concept underscores the fundamental belief that AI must be people-centric," Fink said in a statement. "It highlights the human role in AI adoption, instilling confidence in our audience globally. It’s remarkable working on such an innovative campaign and being instrumental in driving home a message that continues to shape the future of how we experience and interact with AI.”

In addition to espousing a humanitarian vision for the future of AI, the new campaign video is also geared towards portraying EY.ai as a cohort of experts that can be relied upon to help clients understand and maximally leverage the mesmerizing and sometimes overwhelming wave of new AI technologies.

“To adopt AI, you need to know how it will impact your business,” says John Rudaizky, global brand and marketing leader at EY. “Ultimately, we want [our] clients to know that we’re available to help them… This campaign, in its broadest sense, is about how you can build confidence to navigate into this new era [of AI] and [how we’re] really on hand to help clients navigate through this.”

Echoing another talking point that’s become common among marketers – that AI can help to more efficiently deliver traditionally time-consuming tasks – Rudaizky adds: “Without AI, it would’ve taken us months and huge amounts of money” to create this campaign.

Rudaizky also acknowledges that the “new era” of AI – which he views as being vanguarded by generative AI – is still in its early days and that most people are still in the process of becoming educated about the technology and how it will impact their day-to-day lives: “With all new technologies, you have to go in with open eyes, and learn.” But he remains optimistic about the future. “I believe [AI] will unlock a new era of creativity,” he says.

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