Under Armour testing "Toolkit" GenAI service

While legal, copyright and ethical questions remain, more and more brands are moving past experimentation and into implementation of GenAI tools…

Like most apparel brands, Under Armour faces a continuous need to spend portions of its advertising budget on product photography and videography. Creative directors often lament what comes next—the long days on set, equipment malfunctions and the inevitable rounds of reshoots. 

But marketers developing generative AI are trying to nip this process in the bud. A new service from creative production company Tool is designed to compile a dataset representing a brand’s “visual DNA,” which can be edited and iterated upon to create new assets and obviate the need for physical shoots. These assets, generated by AI, can be lifelike representations of products as well as of human models wearing the products.

And after roughly 15 minutes of touch-up work, these assets are ready to use for a variety of advertising channels, including out-of-home placements, digital and print marketing and social posts, according to Dustin Callif, president of creative production company Tool.

The new service, dubbed “Toolkit,” is a potential boon for marketers looking to cut costs and save time, such as Under Armour, which has been one of its early testers. Viewed through a wider lens, the platform is an indication of the increasing creative abilities that generative AI offers the ad industry. Not concerned with streamlining emails or producing unusable visuals, Toolkit was developed to create advertising media that can withstand the scrutiny of mainstream audiences. 

Full story at AdAge.