An AI startup wants 'vibe directing' to become the new vibe coding

Here comes an AI ad campaign that could ruffle some feathers in Hollywood.

AI text-to-video platform OpenArt AI is launching ads in AMC movie theaters across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York this week to promote its Director product, the company exclusively told CMO Insider. The push also includes billboards in those cities, as well as digital and social placements.

Director lets users describe an idea, visual style, and narrative arc in conversational language, then generates videos up to five minutes long.

The company said it hopes the campaign — created entirely in-house using the Director tool — will spark a wave of "vibe directing," echoing the rise of "vibe coding," and inspire newcomers to create micro dramas, music videos, or ads.

"I don't think we're trying to be provocative, but it's just that we think the audience is a really good fit," Stella Guan, head of growth and operations at OpenArt AI, told me when I asked whether targeting the campaign to cinemagoers was designed to poke the hornet's nest.

AI has provoked a backlash within Hollywood's creative community over the technology's potential to destroy jobs and the proliferation of low-quality "AI slop." A growing segment of the industry — including Ben Affleck and Martin Scorsese — has become more open to embracing it to streamline and enhance their technical work, though.

Founded in 2022 by two former Googlers, OpenArt AI says it has grown to 8 million monthly active users. In January, the company raised a $30 million Series A round led by Canaan Partners.

The company's in-house studio of six creative directors spent four days coming up with ideas for the ad using the Director product. The company held a "movie night" screening marathon before selecting the final spot.

The ad depicts a man eating a hot dog on a bench beside a basketball court. He's then approached by a "coach" character who blows a whistle and wields a laptop. The man tells the coach he has always wanted to make a movie about a penguin in the desert.

The coach types it into OpenArt, explaining he can create any video he wants, "even a micro drama."

The man protests, "I don't watch micro dramas."

OpenArt AI said its budget for the Director marketing campaign is in the "low hundreds of thousands" of dollars.

Countering AI criticism

Some consumers have an aversion to AI-generated ads. A survey published in January by the IAB and Sonata Insights found 30% of Gen Z respondents said brands using AI in ads were "inauthentic," while 26% said they were "disconnected," and 24% "unethical."

Moral panic about AI aside, James Poulter, CEO of the AI consultancy ThreePoint Labs, said AI companies need to be cautious about overselling their platforms' capabilities to everyday users.

"All of the models are overselling how easy it is to create the top 1% of excellent," Poulter said. "No matter how capable the models are of creating cinematic things out of the box, if you don't have the language of cinema or being a director, you cannot steer the model to deliver something akin to someone who does have that language."

Guan said a lot of the criticism about the use of AI in advertising and other creative works could be attributed to people not being aware of how far the technology has progressed since its early iterations.

She hopes the ad will show that AI is producing higher-quality output fit for the big cinema screen.

"I think that by itself is a great showcase of our product's capability as well as of the technology," Guan said.