导演雷德利·斯科特（左）与保罗·梅斯卡尔在《角斗士2》的片场。
Director Ridley Scott, left, and Paul Mescal on the set of Gladiator II.
广告业曾为从雷德利·斯科特到盖·里奇等众多导演开启职业生涯，而如今自动化制作正在削减成本——同时也削弱了通过实践学习的机会。当雷德利·斯科特因执导《异形》《银翼杀手》《角斗士》和《火星救援》等影片而荣获英国最高荣誉时，他在八年前参加英国电影学院奖（BAFTA）活动时曾提醒与会者，制作广告正是他的“电影学校”。
广告行业长期以来一直是英国电影和电视人才的摇篮，许多从业者后来成功转型至好莱坞制作领域，例如最初制作音乐视频和广告的盖·里奇，以及《秘鲁的帕丁顿》导演道格·威尔逊，其作品还包括多支约翰·刘易斯著名的圣诞广告。
Commercials once launched careers from Ridley Scott to Guy Ritchie, now automated production is cutting costs – and the chance to learn by doing hen Ridley Scott was awarded the UK’s highest accolade for a glittering career directing films from Alien and Blade Runner to Gladiator and The Martian he reminded those attending the Bafta event eight years ago that making commercials had been his“film school” The advertising industry has long been a breeding ground for British film and TV talent who have gone on to make the jump to Hollywood productions including Guy Ritchie, who started out making music videos and commercials, and Paddington in Peru director Dougal Wilson, whose credits include a number of John Lewis’s famous Christmas ads.
然而，广告行业为了削减客户成本、避免被大型科技公司边缘化而陷入的焦虑式人工智能技术普及浪潮，也引发了人们对一代人才可能错失成长机会的担忧——他们或许无法成长为杰出的英国电影和电视导演。
But the panicked race to introduce AI technology across the advertising industry to cut client costs and avoid being pushed aside by big tech, has raised fears of a lost generation who may be denied the opportunity to develop into great British film and TV directors.
“百分之百，是的，我确实感到担忧。”卢克·斯科特说道。他负责管理包括雷德利·斯科特公司（Ridley Scott Associates）在内的集团，这是一家由他父亲于20世纪60年代共同创立的媒体制作公司。
“100%, yes, I have fears,” says Luke Scott, who runs the group that includes Ridley Scott Associates, the media production company that was co-founded by his father in the 1960s.
“我已经足够成熟，能够认识到变革是不可避免的。但就生成式人工智能目前的表现而言，我看到的整体结果褒贬不一。你可以借助它完成某些创作，然后说：‘看看我做了什么，是不是很有创意？’但这极具误导性，某种程度上，它只是在向我们引入一种替代性的创造力。”
“I’m grown up enough to recognise that change is inevitable. But what I’ve seen generally in terms of generative AI output is a very mixed bag. You can turn to it and do something and say ‘Look what I made and isn’t it edifying’. But that is very misleading and sort of introducing us to an ersatz creativity.
“最严峻的危险在于万物被单一文化所取代。创意行业是边做边学的，而真正有价值的，恰恰是实践的过程。操控无人机并不等同于真正的飞行，它没有那种身临其境的感受，因为你并没有真正在飞行。那么，面对这一代失去体验的人，我们该怎么办？或许在20年或30年后，我们如今所熟知的广告行业概念，将变成一个[不合时宜]的笑话。”
“The grave danger is the monoculturalisation of everything. The creative business is something you learn by doing. It is in the doing that is most valuable. Flying a drone isn’t like flying, there isn’t that visceral feeling to it, you are not actually flying. What do you do with that lost generation? Maybe in 20 or 30 years the whole notion of the ad industry as we work now will be an [anachronistic] joke.”
上个月，全球广告集团WPP在伦敦东部一座改造后的仓库中，正式启用了其旗舰制作中心。这是其国际布局中的首个项目，旨在引领其价值6亿英镑的WPP制作业务，目标是将“世界级的创意与先进的AI能力整合到同一屋檐下”。
Last month, the global advertising group WPP officially opened its flagship production facility in a converted warehouse in east London. It was the first in an international rollout spearheading its £600m WPP Production business, as it aims to bring “world-class creativity and advanced AI capabilities under one roof”.
前微软高管辛迪·罗斯被任命为WPP首席执行官，以扭转公司命运。她表示，AI正在开启“营销的黄金时代”。
Cindy Rose, a former Microsoft executive appointed WPP’s CEO to turn around its fortunes, said that AI is ushering in a “golden age of marketing”.
“WPP乃至整个行业正处在一个关键的转折点。”她说道。背景画面中，一辆福特Capri正在AI生成的巴黎街头行驶，并被镜头捕捉下来。“我们必须更好地利用现有的AI优势。我们不再需要把客户的预算花在昂贵的海外拍摄上，完全可以在工作室完成拍摄，从而彻底改变内容供应链的经济模式。我们能够实现与文化同步的速度来交付内容。”
“WPP and the industry as a whole is at a critical inflection point,” she said, against a backdrop of a Ford Capri being shot cruising the streets of an AI-generated Paris. “We have to better leverage the AI advantage we have. We no longer need to spend our clients’ budgets on expensive shoots abroad. We can do it in the studio [and] completely change the economics of our content supply chain. We can deliver content at the speed of culture.”
一位行业人士称，部分广告的制作成本可降低多达60%，这促使一些客户开始采用AI主导的广告，以“向财务总监展示他们实现了成本节约”，尽管这些广告内容往往显得“千篇一律”，且由于导演角色的弱化，创意也出现了“退化”。
One industry source said that some ads can be made up to 60% cheaper, which has some clients embracing AI-led ads to “show finance directors they are making savings”, even though the output often looks “cookie cutter” and suffers a creative “erosion from the diminished role of a director”.
在汽车行业的这一话题上，原文提出疑问：在一个日益以人工智能为先的广告行业中，《壮志凌云》是否仍会成为它曾经那样的典型80年代大片。这部电影的制片人唐·西蒙斯和杰里·布鲁克海默在观看了一则电视广告后，选择了导演雷德利·斯科特已故的弟弟托尼。在这则广告中，托尼让一辆萨博汽车与一架战斗机展开竞速，这种风格几乎可以看作整部电影所采用的电影手法的预告片。然而，WPP制作公司首席执行官理查德·格拉斯恩表示，行业始终都在拥抱新技术，而人工智能的使用也不例外。
On the topic of the automotive sector the source questioned whether, in an increasingly AI-first ad industry, Top Gun would have become the quintessential 1980s blockbuster that it did. The film’s producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, chose their director, Ridley Scott’s late brother Tony, after seeing a TV ad in which he depicted a Saab car racing a fighter jet in what could pass for a trailer for the cinematic style adopted throughout the film However, Richard Glasson, the chief executive of WPP Production, said that new technologies have always been embraced by the industry and the use of AI is no different.
“这正是内容发展的未来方向，一个面向未来的AI内容制作引擎，”他说。“我们用来创作作品的基础技术正在发生变化。人工智能已经引入电视和电影领域，但迄今为止在广告行业尚未被广泛采用。”他还补充说，那些需要跟上内容创作节奏的客户正在拥抱人工智能，因为如今他们需要应对的数字媒体平台数量，远超过广告公司过去需要应对的数量。
“It is the future of where content is going, an AI production powerhouse for the future,” he said. “The underlying tech we use to create work is changing. It is being introduced in TV and film but not widely adopted in advertising to this point.”He added that AI is being embraced by clients who need to be able to keep up with creating content across dozens more digital media platforms than ad agencies have ever had to keep pace with.
“所有客户都需要比以往多得多的内容，”他说。“他们与消费者沟通的渠道数量呈爆炸式增长。要想战胜算法，就必须不断创作新内容，而不仅仅是将同一个广告活动重复使用六个月——那样的时代已经过去了。现在关键在于快速推向市场，让过去不可能的事情成为可能。我们甚至可以在一个下午内，将品牌呈现在世界任何角落。”不过，他认为经典的大片式广告活动以及创作获奖作品所需人才的时代，尚未终结。
“All clients need a vastly greater amount of content,” he said. “There has been an explosion in the number of channels that they are talking to their consumers. To win against the algorithms you have to be producing new content, not just repurposing one ad campaign for six months, those days are gone. It is about speed to market, making the previous impossible possible. We can place a brand anywhere in the world in a single afternoon.”Yet he does not believe that the days of the classic blockbuster ad campaign, and the need for the talent to create award-winning work, are numbered.
“我们依然会制作耗时九个月才完成的超级碗广告，也会策划世界杯营销活动，以及邀请名人到异国他乡拍摄的广告，”他说道。“这类项目依然存在，未来也会继续存在。大家都在担心人工智能会抢走工作岗位，但在制作领域我们看到的情况恰恰相反。我认为人工智能能助力实现资源丰沛，而从事制作行业的人员也极具适应能力，他们对技术及其能带来的可能性充满好奇心。”
“We still make Super Bowl ads that take nine months, football World Cup campaigns and ads with celebrities in exotic locales,” he said. “They still exist and will continue to exist. The elephant in the room is whether AI is coming for jobs, in production we are seeing the opposite. I see AI as an enabler of abundance, and the people working in production as infinitely adaptable and curious about tech and what it will allow us to do.”