The proof-of-concept has been led by students on WPP’s Creative Tech Apprenticeship
WPP has unveiled a GenAI-driven project that enables scenes to be created using natural language text-to-video enquiries.
The initiative makes it possible to quickly create detailed scenes that are assembled from the huge library of cg assets in the WPP library.
Scenes are rendered at high speed on specially built PCs by Renderboxes with 14 x Nividia A6000 graphics cards. Each graphics card cost around £6k.
The build the system, WPP partnered with leading global technology providers to have access to their large-language models. WPP build custom APIs to protect its own as well as its clients’ data.
You can ask something like, ‘Make me a backdrop with a large forest in the foreground and a road winding through mountains’ and it pieces the scene together from the most appropriate cg elements in the library.
These are then rendered very quickly using the high-powered workstation.
Nvidia, Adobe, WPP, Arri and numerous other large tech brands are part of the proof-of-concept.
Commercials cinematographer Brett Danton works with WPP to provide a DoP’s view on how tech can be utilised to enable creativity in commercials production, including the use of virtual production and AI.
He trains students on the Creative Tech Apprenticeship scheme run by WPP (see box below). The Apprenticeship students were heavily involved in the creation of WPP’s GenAI tool.
Danton explains: “We created customisable ads using a large-language-model that generates worlds with GenAI. The system, which was developed as a proof-of-concept, was developed by our tech apprenticeship students, bringing WPP’s huge library of 3D assets together to enable natural language requests to build scenes. It takes just two seconds to render each frame in a data centre, using a ramped up PC kitted out with Nvidia cards.”
The Creative Tech Apprenticeship
The Creative Tech Apprenticeship is a nine month, fully funded intensive program where individuals learn creative technology skills and develop their artistic voice by working on real life projects with some of the top marketing agencies in the world.
Founded by WPP and partnered with some of the biggest names in the industry (Nvidia, Microsoft, Epic Games, etc.), apprentices learn the latest software and hardware that will prepare them for a career in today’s creative technology field.
The program gives participants the experience of working on collaborative projects with real-world clients to not only give them a better understanding of executing projects from idea to installation, but give them a competitive portfolio, allowing them to complete this program ready to enter the industry.
Those taking part learn technical and creative skills, with classes including creative coding, game engines, virtual production, future machines, and Generative AI. During the apprenticeship, students work on real projects for real clients.
WPP’s mission is to prepare our apprentices for the current creative technology industry, teaching them the skills used by top agencies today and preparing them to enter the workforce as a successful employee.
To ensure this, the company has its syllabi taught and prepared by the industry’s leading creative engineers and supplements the curriculum with workshops on creating a portfolio, writing a resume, learning how to networking, practicing giving a pitch and more.
WPP is a leading marketing and communications company. Its agencies include GroupM, VML, Ogilvy, AKQA, Burson and global production company Hogarth. Its clients include Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Google, Ford and Amazon.
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