Comment by echelon
2 days ago
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/nx-s1-5432712/ai-video-ad-kal...
Typical large team $300,000 ad made for < $2,000 in a weekend by one person.
It's going to be a bloodbath.
2 days ago
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/nx-s1-5432712/ai-video-ad-kal...
Typical large team $300,000 ad made for < $2,000 in a weekend by one person.
It's going to be a bloodbath.
> Kalshi's Jack Such declined to disclose Accetturo's fee for creating the ad. But, he added, "the actual cost of prompting the AI — what is being used in lieu of studios, directors, actors, etc. — was under $2,000."
So in other words, if you ignore the costs of paying people to create the ad, it barely costs anything. A true accounting miracle!
Do you pay people to pump your gas?
How about harvesting your whale blubber to power your oil lamp at night?
The nature of work changes all the time.
If an ad can be made with one person, that's it. We're done. There's no going back to hiring teams of 50 people.
It's stupid to say we must hire teams of 50 to make an advertisement just because. There's no reason for that. It's busy work. The job is to make the ad, not to give 50 people meaningless busy work.
And you know what? The economy is going to grow to accommodate this. Every single business is now going to need animated ads. The market for video is going to grow larger than we've ever before imagined, and in ways we still haven't predicted.
Your local plumber is going to want a funny action movie trailer slash plumbing advertisement to advertise their services. They wouldn't have even been in the market before.
You're going to have silly videos for corporate functions. Independent filmmakers will be making their own Miyazaki and Spielberg epics that cater to the most niche of audiences - no more mass market Marvel that has to satisfy everybody, you're going to see fictional fantasy biopic reimaginings of Grace Hopper fighting the vampire Nazis. Whatever. There'll be a market for everything, and 100,000 times as many creators with actual autonomy.
In some number of years, there is going to be so much more content being produced. More content in single months than in all human history up to this point. Content that caters to the very long tail.
And you know what that means?
Jobs out the wazoo.
More jobs than ever before.
They're just going to look different and people will be doing more.
> Your local plumber is going to want a funny action movie trailer slash plumbing advertisement to advertise their services. They wouldn't have even been in the market before.
And why would your local plumber hire someone to produce this funny action trailer (which I'm not convinced would actually help them from an advertising perspective), when they can simply have an AI produce that action funny action trailer without hiring anyone? Assuming models improve sufficiently that will become trivially possible.
> Independent filmmakers will be making their own Miyazaki and Spielberg epics that cater to the most niche of audiences - no more mass market Marvel that has to satisfy everybody, you're going to see fictional fantasy biopic reimaginings of Grace Hopper fighting the vampire Nazis.
Well, first of all, if the audience is "the most niche of audiences", then I'm not sure how that's going to lead to a sustainable career. And again -- if I want to see my niche historical fantasy interests come to life in a movie about Grace Hopper fighting vampire Nazis, why will I need a filmmaker to create this for me when I can simply prompt an AI myself? "Give me a fun action movie that incorporates famous computer scientists fighting Nazis. Make it 1.5 hours long, and give it a comedic tone."
I think you're fundamentally overvaluing what humans will be able to provide in an era where creating content is very cheap and very easy.
This ad was purposefully playing off the fact that it was AI though, it was a large amount of short bizarre things like two old women selling Fresh Manatee out of the back of a truck. You couldn't replace a regular ad with this.
I've got friends at WPP. Heads are rolling.
This is very much real and happening as we speak.
oh no the poor advertisers
Cheaper poorer quality ads means a bad time for us, people who are being incessantly targeted by this crap.
Websites are already finding creative ways around DNS blocklists for ads serving.