AI video generation has been getting better as fast as the Tesla Cybertruck design disaster has been getting worse. Put the two things together, and you have a slightly cringey but smoothly edited fan-made AI-generated Tesla ad that people think is real.
The speculative advert was made by an AI video enthusiast and is not endorsed by Tesla, but a lot of people have been fooled. The imagery is better quality than that of even some official AI-generated adverts (we're looking at you Volvo), although it still has a very uncanny and robotic feel.
The AI Tesla Cybertruck advert was made by Justin Hounkpatin, who goes under the name Loop'n'Mix, for the YouTube channel AI Fiction Factory. Justin says the piece took about three weeks to make, including a week spent on the script. He used a bunch of generative AI tools, including Google DeepMind's Veo 2 (I2V and T2V) Freepik's implementation of Imagen 3 and Veo2 I2V and LumaAI's Ray 2.
You might not realise that the ad was AI until the voices start a few seconds in, at which point it becomes painfully obvious. The script is rather boring and banal, but then so are a lot of genuine ads. And unlike a lot of AI video we've seen so far, the visual quality is just about watchable, which is impressive considering that the piece is relatively long, clocking in at 2 minutes.
The ad has already been shared on other platforms, including on X, where people are taking it to be a real Tesla advert. "Man this is an extremely mid ad. Actually a bad one," one person wrote with surprise. "A lot of people pointing out that this ad sucks. This is true. But you can kind of see what it's going for," someone else added.
Someone even wrote: "When you think about the Tesla brand, this is very demonstrative of their AI prowess. Was it created by Grok or @xai?" And one person claims to have been moved by the ad. "Not only is the video quality solid, with few artifacts, but it also moved me like a well-made short film would. I admit that I even got emotional by the end," they wrote.
The response could be interpreted as demonstrating a couple of things. First, that generative AI video has got so good so fast that people now believe that a 100% AI advert could feasibly be official material from one of the world's most famous brands. Second, that Tesla's reputation is so bad that people think it would resort to such a crummy advert in a last half-hearted attempt to shift sales amid its Cybertruck flop.
The piece is a convincing demonstration that usable AI video is coming fast, at least for b-roll visuals. Although, as some have pointed out on X, you could achieve something similar by editing stock footage together. We'll surely see a lot more as Adobe rolls out generative AI in Premiere Pro (see our pick of the best video editing software).
