OpenAI’s Super Bowl Ad: Introducing the Intelligence Age

The webinar, opened by Natalie Cone, the community architect of the OpenAI Forum, highlighted its inception in 2023 to bring together experts across disciplines to ensure artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. The Forum has since enabled rich dialogues among Nobel laureates, Turing Award winners, and over 10,000 other experts, shaping the future of OpenAI's technologies. The session featured David Droga, CEO of Droga5 (part of AccentureSong), and Kate Rouch, Chief Marketing Officer at OpenAI, discussing the creative process behind OpenAI's inaugural television advertisement, which premiered during the Super Bowl.

Kate emphasized AI as the transformative technology of our era, recounting her journey from leading global marketing at Coinbase, including a viral Super Bowl ad, to OpenAI, where she focuses on making AI accessible and inspiring. Her extensive experience at Meta, where she contributed to its massive user growth, underpins her expertise in global brand building. David reflected on his career from his early days in advertising in Sydney to founding Droga5, known for its creative and technologically savvy campaigns. He discussed his belief that creativity must be amplified by technology, evident in how Droga5’s campaigns have effectively combined creative boldness with technological innovation.

A significant part of the conversation focused on the synergy between creativity and AI, with both speakers endorsing the power of AI to enhance, not replace, human creativity. They discussed how AI tools could democratize and expand creative processes, making them more inclusive. The dialogue also touched on maintaining authenticity in advertising, especially in high-stakes environments like the Super Bowl, advocating for ads that resonate with the brand’s core values rather than conforming to typical advertising clichés.

The webinar concluded with insights into OpenAI’s future initiatives, emphasizing integrity and authenticity in communications and innovations. Natalie Cone wrapped up the session by thanking the speakers for their insights, reflecting on the productive discussion that not only illuminated OpenAI's advertising strategies but also the broader implications of AI in creative industries. This session was part of OpenAI’s broader effort to engage the public and experts in meaningful conversations about the future of AI and its societal impact, showcasing how strategic and thoughtful advertising can effectively communicate the transformative potential of AI.

Welcome to the OpenAI Forum. I'm Natalie Cone, your community architect. We launched the OpenAI Forum in 2023 to collaborate with interdisciplinary experts in pursuit of our mission, ensuring that artificial general intelligence, AGI, benefits all of humanity.

Since then, the forum has brought together a community of Nobel laureates, touring award winners, leading faculty researchers, and more than 10,000 expert practitioners from diverse fields to foster meaningful dialogue and create tangible opportunities to shape the development of OpenAI's technology.

As a bridge between OpenAI and expertise beyond our wall, the forum helps us collectively imagine and build a positive future with AGI. This event marks the beginning of a new era for the forum, where we share the expert talks hosted by our community with the broader public.

Today we'll hear from David Droga, CEO of Droga5, now a part of AccentureSong, and Kate Rouch, newly appointed chief marketing officer at OpenAI, to discuss the creation and thematic underpinnings of OpenAI's very first TV ad, which made its debut at the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Kate Rouch is the chief marketing officer at OpenAI, where she's focused on building a global brand that makes AI feel accessible, inspiring, and useful. She believes AI is the most transformative technology of our time and is passionate about helping people understand and engage with its potential.

Previously, Kate was CMO at Coinbase, leading global marketing as crypto went mainstream. She spearheaded high-profile campaigns, including Coinbase's viral-bouncing QR code Super Bowl ad, one of the most talked about in history.

Before that, she spent over a decade at Meta, helping scale the company from 500 million to nearly 3 billion users, and leading marketing for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook. Her work has earned multiple creative awards, including the Direct Grand Prix at Cannes. She and her husband are avid skiers and equestrians, living in the Sierra Nevada mountains with their two kids and four horses.

At 18, David Droga began delivering packages, learning, and keeping secrets at Grey Sydney. But later that year, after winning National Student of the Year at Australian Writers and Directors School, is when his creative career began. He joined Oman Sydney as the agency's first creative hire, moved to Sochi in Sochi, Singapore as Executive Creative Director and Regional Creative Director at Sochi Asia, then moved to London to be Chief Creative Officer at Sochi's global headquarters.

When Publicis Group acquired Sochi in 2000, he became worldwide Chief Creative Officer of the Publicis Network, which took him to New York in 2005. In 2006, David opened Droga5, named after the number-coded laundry tag his mother sewed into his clothes to differentiate him from his four brothers at boarding school.

With a team of brilliant creatives, strategists, and makers, Droga5 hatched some of the most studied and successful campaigns of the last 25 years. Droga5 were named Agency of the Year more than 30 times by industry press and global award shows.

In 2019, Droga5 was named Agency of the Decade by Adweek, and in 2020, Agency of the Decade by Adage. In 2019, seeing the unbridled necessity of technology to scale, David sold Droga5 to consulting and tech giant Accenture, which was a game changer for both companies.

David is an avid art collector, amateur farmer, terrible tennis player, and frustrated environmentalist. He sits on the board of the New York Museum, the New York Public Theater, and New York City Public Radio. In 2017, with his brother Daniel, he created, funded, and launched the Droga Family Foundation, which is now the largest Indigenous scholarship in Australia, in partnership with the Australian government and the University of Technology Sydney. His greatest accomplishment is creating four kids who aren't at all impressed with any of this. Please help me welcome Kate and David to the stage.

Hi, David. Hi, Kate. I'm sorry for that long introduction by CV, I didn't know that was going to happen, but hello from Paris.

Well, they missed, if I could give you some feedback, the most important thing, which is that you are an incredible Wordle player, which I know because we play Wordle together, I think, basically every day, so just some real-time feedback for you, David.

That is a real strength. What you're not saying is that we also play Connections, which you beat me in every time. That's also true. I do think, starting out, one of the things on my mind as I was really thinking about this conversation is, frankly, the strength of human relationships in making great work. You and I have worked together for a long time.

I started at OpenAI on December 10th, and orientation at OpenAI is on Tuesdays, but we knew that there was ambition and really a need to start telling this company's story in scaled media ASAP, and we couldn't wait until that Tuesday. We did an on-site with your team on the Monday of that week, and we all had visitor badges on. I think someone on the team asked me where the bathroom was, and I didn't know.

For you and I, that obviously wasn't day one, so I was just wondering if you can remember even when we first met and some of the stuff that we've worked on together.

Great question. First of all, thank you for inviting me to this, but also thank you for inviting me to even be part of this journey with OpenAI. It's interesting because we first met before I sold the company when I was just at Drogo5 as the creative chairman, and you were at Meta, Facebook at the time. It was around the time of COVID, actually, so we were thrown in the deep end, and we had to create something in 11 days, which actually now makes the five or six weeks that we had to create this.

Luxurious. Seem indulgent and luxurious. But what it did prove is when you have something compelling, and you have some intention in what you're trying to create, and you want to create something that's not generic, then you can do great things, and creativity, strategy, simplicity, and clarity all go together. That's something that was very successful for us because we got to create something wonderful and beautiful, and appropriate as well.

I think that was five, six years ago, and then obviously when you went to Coinbase, we created the QR code thing together, which again, was outrageous at the time, but appropriate. I'm holding onto your coattails, I think, but the power and alchemy of creativity and technology together is something that I so firmly believe in, and I think that that's why you've made choices of where you work and where you've chosen to put your talents.

I've always felt privileged to apply my storytelling or belief in creativity with these companies and these brands because they add so much, and there's so much to share with people. Our journey has been interesting, and as I said, we're just getting started now, but there's so many ways to unpack it, but again, it was a great break to get.

Yeah, and one of the things that I also really think about is, frankly, how small teams that really trust each other can do a lot in the world because you can have that sort of clarity, you can move quickly, and you can take risks. I think one of the things that's really embedded in all the companies that we've worked in together, and one of the things I think to know is,

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All of the companies we've worked in have been founder-led companies that are really at the frontier of innovation.

David, you're a founder. I think having that willingness to take risk, to actually really understand the mission of the company as the primary touchstone is just so critically important.

As Natalie was introducing the forum today, she talked about the audience, the origin, Fields Medal winners, Nobel laureates. What's the nucleus of people who are building this technology?

I think one of the things, as we were discussing the brief, is, of course, the Super Bowl and Super Bowl media has a pretty clear convention. Celebrities are often featured, humor is often featured, ads that really tug at your heartstrings. There are ways to tell stories in the format that people expect in the Super Bowl.

One of the most important things that we had to balance and to think about as we were looking at this brief and this opportunity is, how can we take advantage of the moment to really communicate for the first time to a huge scaled audience about OpenAI and chat GBT and, frankly, the dawn of this historical moment that we're in with the intelligence age in a way that people find compelling, pay attention to in the middle of a very busy, super saturated cultural moment and do something that feels really uniquely authentic to the very special, very, I will say, unique or unusual people who are at the core of building this movement, who are the people at the frontier.

And so, you know, if we had done something and I'll be reductive here, but that had a bunch of celebrities or like fart jokes and crushed it with the Super Bowl, you know, convention, but fundamentally felt. Inauthentic to the people who are actually.

You know, creating this movement, I think that would have really been a miss. So I guess I'm just curious, like, you know, you've done a ton of Super Bowl ads. I don't even know if you know how many. Yeah, so I'm just curious, like how this experience compared, how you thought about the brief coming in.

Well, great questions, there's multiple questions in that, but I'll start by saying it does help and I'm always drawn to founded companies because someone that has the bravery to start a company and drive a company is also usually a decisive person. And a lot of the times, you know, consensus is a way to get to compromise. So having a team of people that are willing to make decisions, you forge through and you usually come out with some sort of clarity in the complexity.

So that's why, you know, again, maybe why you've been drawn to these companies you've worked for and maybe a lot of the best work that I've been associated with has been with companies that have found that as well. But then you sort of your broader question about the Super Bowl. I mean, it's such an interesting thing because I come from a world when I say the word advertising and market, it's most people assume the worst because most advertising is terrible and it's polluted and it's formulaic and it's sort of patronizing.

But the very best advertising, the very best brands know what they stand for, know what their audience is, and they want to connect with them in a way that's distinctive and true to who they are. And that can be, it doesn't always have to be heartfelt and purposeful. I mean, it sometimes can be irreverent and fun, but you just have to know who you're going to be and what you want to be, what you want to stand for.

So I think within the Super Bowl, again, there is a format like it. There's no question it is the biggest stage in the world for advertising. It might be one of the only events where people pay attention to advertising. You know, I used to always joke with new people when they would join our company years ago and say, you know, people invent technology to steal movies and games and people invented technology to avoid and skip advertising and marketing, which if that isn't a wake-up call to the industry to create things that are much more compelling and relevant. Now, as a creative person, I always think that let's put our creativity and strategy into that one. And for the Super Bowl, yes, it has sort of become an arms race of celebrity and special effects and impact. It's almost like a firework show.

It's just like and people and to some brands, that's fine because they're just trying to show that they're still alive and they're relevant, they can get a laugh. But for other brands, it's a chance to sort of introduce themselves to the world and show that they stand for something.

And one of the great things about our very early conversation with you and with Sam was, you know, we don't have to adhere to that. We have to play and win. You know, and the great thing is, again, OpenAI is such a distinctive force in the world. And even you look at the way the design of the interface and all of that. So there is a tone already that's set so we don't have to try and manufacture something.

So I found it very relieving in the very first conversations that we wanted to put our best foot forward and we didn't have to adhere or play to the formula of the Super Bowl. And I remember the same thing when we did the Coinbase ad, you know, we knew when we did the barcode floating around that 90 million people would look at the TV going, what the F is that? Like, where's Peyton Manning and where's there a girl in a bikini? But we knew 30 million other people who, you know, they were more native to that sort of technology would take their phones out and they would scan the barcode and would take.

So, you know, it's knowing what you want to get out of it. So that's why, again, it was a relief to sort of look at what the ambition was and knowing that we had to do. And also, I'll say one thing. This is not about just that one commercial. This is about sort of setting, as you said, this is the first time you've really sort of put yourself out there. But it's a chance to sort of set a tone and a construct, even from an iconography point of view, and also to sort of link ourselves with the arc of progress.

I really liked that thought to sort of go from great progress, but then make it much more invitational towards the end, because I think that's really important. And also, again, knowing, you know, the thing is context is a really important thing. It's not just that, you know, I always say there's three C's. There's a canvas, which is the medium, you know, and then there's, you know, there's obviously there's a concept, which is the storytelling. But then there is the context, you know, which is how's it being consumed?

And we knew it was going to be consumed amongst this craziness of every other commercial. So it was almost like a calming effect for us to put something out there that has restraints. It has simplicity to it. There's from the audio cues, the visual cues to what the messaging is like, there's something about that. And we weren't afraid, again, tip of the hat to everyone on the OpenAI side for having the courage to do that.

And again, but you don't need to be told to be courageous because you're busy sort of building a force that's going to have this massive impact on the world. As I said, you're not playing in a generic category where you'll do whatever it takes to get attention. You're playing a bigger game than that. So our job is as strategists and creatives is to honor the brand, but also elevate it wherever we can to make it distinctive.

So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things on my mind is, well, a couple of things. One, I mean, when we did that QR code ad for Coinbase, I think it was the only ad, at least in my memory, that got awards as the best ad of the Super Bowl and the worst ad of the Super Bowl. 100%.

Which was, I thought that was such a victory in itself because, yeah, whatever the polls were the most, you know, disruptive, favorite ad. But I knew it was going to get people like, that's just a terrible blower. And again, you don't have to be for everybody. You just have to be for the people you need to be for.

And I think that's really important. I think that's so important, especially in our age. And one of the things that I often talk to my.

teams about is really understand the core of both your company and, frankly, the core audience, your fanatical users, and communicate from that a really grounded and authentic point of view, as opposed to trying to get people to like you or shift who you fundamentally are to try to fit into maybe a conception of what a broader audience might want. Because I think, fundamentally, people respond across demographic groups to honesty, to bravery, to, frankly, intention, whether that's showing up in craft or strategy or how a piece of media is coming to life in the world. I don't think we trust our audiences enough. Frankly, this is the first step in what will be a many-step journey for the brand. And even just getting people's attention, having people talk about and debate what they saw, the technology, that is the brief. That's actually core to what we're doing.

I also, frankly, think we've worked in youth-centered products in the past. One of the things to really understand about a product like ChachiBT is use is not evenly distributed in the population. Almost 80% of people that are currently using ChachiBT are 35 and younger. So in many ways, I think it is very hard to abstract to just kind of a mass faceless audience for this brand. But I think that holds true in the modern media landscape for, frankly, any brand. Oh, it's so polluted and crowded out there. So it's really important that brands, your body language has to match what's coming out of your mouth as well. And so your behaviors and how you act has to act what you're saying, in sync with what you're saying. I think most corporations don't necessarily, through the medium of advertising marketing, don't necessarily respect their consumer. You know what I mean? As I said, they put up different fronts and stuff like that. And that doesn't mean respect always has to be noble. I mean, sometimes, again, if it's a fun brand, you can be fun and you can be thoughtful or whatever it is. You just play in the right tone. But again, you think about the role you're playing in people's lives. You're also at the early stages of mass, mass influence. Unlike a lot of other categories, the excitement is met with caution and nervousness as well, right? So we have to tread potentially more carefully and more thoughtfully than, say, other brands.

Well, I mean, I'm curious about, because obviously, AI in advertising and AI in the creative professions is an area of split opinion, a lot of debate. That was obviously something that we explicitly talked about in deciding to work together as we were formulating this idea. You often say, I know you have a strong point of view about AI and creativity, which has long held before we started working together or I started working at OpenAI. So I'm just curious for the benefit of the audience who maybe haven't heard that, do you mind sharing a little about your thoughts broadly?

Well, I built an agency. As I said, my background is as a writer and a creative. And we were sort of celebrated creative agency in America for a long time. And I always wanted to be like, I want to build the most influential creative agency in the world. And after a while, while we sort of were very celebrated, I realized that our influence wasn't as broad as I thought it could and should be. And unless we sort of partnered and understood technology as an amplifier, technology needs creativity to humanize it. And creativity needs technology to amplify and scale it. You know what I mean? And the alchemy of those two things together, I've never been scared of that. And I was, you know, I'm obviously older than you, but I saw sort of technology changed lots of different elements of the industry. But it didn't change the necessity for creativity and connection and all these things. And so when I sold my company to Accenture, it sent shockwaves through the marketing advertising landscape. Because everyone was like, oh, that must be the death of creativity if this agency is sort of joining forces. And I was like, actually, the exact opposite. And when I stood up in front of my 900 staff and announced it, my actual opening line was, we've won and we've taken over Accenture. Because my attitude is that they need creativity more than anything inserted in the boardrooms. So that's why. And now, because as I went from being a creative to now I'm the CEO of Accenture Song. It actually happened. It's so crazy. I mean, who thought it? I definitely feel like a pirate who took over the Navy. Is that I get sort of wheeled out on stages where people want me to be the spokesperson to talk about or to reassure them. Is AI particularly going to kill creativity? And I always start in a slightly controversial way by saying. Of course. I would expect no less. But I believe it. I'm always like, well, let me just start with the premise that not all creativity is worth saving. And everyone's like, what? And I'm like, well, the creativity is we know it. The messy, mediocre middle, you know what I mean? Because I would argue that most advertising and a lot of writing and a lot of TV and a lot of things that people deem as creative, that AI could do a better job of. Now, the extremities, the things that push us forward in the movement, and the real need for uniqueness and taste and all those things, and that's never going to go out of style. But it can be amplified. And so that's why this is a great. I really believe that it's a tool. And it's a tool that needs us to validate and dignify and all that sort of stuff. And we can push us into places where creativity is liquid, you know what I mean? And it fits into whatever spaces. And if this accentuates and speeds up the process, power to that. I had dinner last night, because I'm in Paris, with Bennett Miller, who's a great advocate of open AI. And he put his movie directing on hold for a while because he was sort of head over heels with Dali, and he's making fantastic art and all that sort of stuff. And again, you take great thinkers and creative people, and they do great things. I mean, you think about photography. You know, when photography first came about, the only people who could really understand it and use it were chemists. But then when that sort of became everyday, you needed the creative people to come in and turn it into something, an art form and a medium and expand it. And I believe that about all technology. It needs strategists and thinkers and people to interpret it, reinterpret it, misinterpret it, and add those dimensions to it. So I'm a big believer in it, which is why I was so excited to even pre us working together on this. I believe this. This is an opinion of convenience now based on this relationship. I really believe that. You know, and I've got-

It was very convenient for me that you did, because I know you and Mira Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI, spoke at CAN last year, which is a major advertising awards festival, a festival of creativity. And you've been speaking about these topics for a long time. I mean, I think there are so many reference. You know, the ad was about historical reference around tools and how tools are both created by humans and then extend human progress, potential, prosperity. I mean, there are myriad examples from our history broadly as a species. And then also in the creative industry, like one that I think about a lot is the transition from silent to sound in film and how that kind of democratized and extended the audience for film and created new industries around theaters and new formats of film.

that weren't well adapted to silent film, et cetera.

Now, of course, in any industry disruption, there is real change. Of course, there are some things that you were doing that don't make sense to do anymore. And I think so much of creativity is actually, is in a way, is almost, now, destruction is a big word, but I do think there is a thing about creative destruction.

I mean, we see that in the literature of creativity from, you know, through the ages, that playing with convention, breaking down convention, thinking outside the box. I mean, convention is the box.

And so much of creativity is playing. Creativity is making more of something than what you inherit. You know, and that's the nature of it. You know what I mean?

And the thing about it is, success and creativity are not nostalgic. We as people can be nostalgic, and it's great to be nostalgic because you honor certain things and principles and values, but to move forward, you can't be held hostage by that. You can take a lot of the belief system and values, but we have to move forward.

And again, technology allows us to do that. And it's irrefutable as well. Like, that's the thing I say to anybody when I'm talking about AI. I'm like, listen, wherever you are on the spectrum, whether you're, you know, excited, euphoric, or you're terrified, you're right. It's a question of what you do with it. Just understand it. And then, you know, embed yourself.

And it's the same, I got four kids. I, and all, they all want to be movie makers. Two of them are in film and like to, but I'm like, it doesn't mean you have to give up your ambitions to connect with people and want to tell stories, but understand the mediums and the tools you have.

That's right. And that's the beauty of it all. And it's intimidating, but then again, creative people, as I said, we sort of forge it. And they need each other.

Again, I think that that's the thing that's really, technology is blunt without people. Absolutely. I mean, and I think what we started to hint at in the end of the ad, and frankly, I think some of the opportunity that we have in front of us is really helping people understand creativity is not some sacred thing for, you know, David Droga on high. This is, you know, this is a human birthright. This is part of all of our, you know, spirits and lives.

And I do, frankly, like, I myself have gone through a journey using ChatGBT over the last 12 months from a very casual user, frankly, to like a very like power daily user. I mean, maybe not, I shouldn't say a power user given what's out there, but really finding ways to use the tool that I just never would have thought of that just add so much to my daily life, you know, from, you know, making things just simpler to really truly like using it as a thought partner to brainstorm and just do things like you wouldn't think of.

Like, you know, and there are all these stories, like, you know, oh, my car's making a weird noise. I uploaded a video of the noise my car's making to ChatGBT and it kind of diagnosed what was wrong and I found the right mechanic, you know, to like my, the nanny from our kids, her husband works in, or he runs a metal yard and there's a lot of machinery that's really complex and has these super long, dense manuals that frankly people don't necessarily read the whole way through and he's uploaded those and made kind of with ChatGBT into like simple one pagers that give you kind of an overview of the machine. Like there's just so many interesting creative ways.

I think that's exactly right. Exactly, I mean, as you said, I don't think creativity is the privilege of those that know how to draw or write or design. I mean, there are elements of creativity, but creativity is, you know, it's code for the new or curiosity or ambition or empathy and all these different things.

And if this just brings down some barriers and allows people to do more things, but at the end of the day, we are who we are. I mean, I remember one of my favourite things that when I did do that talk with Mira, you know, just making small talk with her before we went on stage at dinner the night before, I was asking her about her, you know, her parents, what they thought about her being, you know, one of the main people behind this. And she was telling me how she explained ChatGPT to her mother, who speaks Italian. And she was explaining to her mother, you know, the power of this, the immensity of this, you can ask it anything and it'll deliver you this. And so the mother's very first question that she asked ChatGPT was, when's Mira getting married? Which blew my mind because I love it so much because it also proved one thing is it can't change what people want. There's an innate thing in who we are and it can't do everything. You know what I mean? It's not the catch all for every single thing and it can't change everything about it, but there's distance and stuff in the middle. A lot more it can do than that, but it's not the be all and end all of everything. People are still people. And there's still, you know what I mean? And I think that the fear that people have is they think they're gonna lose who they are and they're not.

Well, and what, I mean, speaking of that, I think we've talked about a lot of, you know, the creative community has a range of reactions about AI, all merited. We used Sora as part of the process for making this ad. You know, as we talked about earlier, we had a very compressed amount of time to do this, which, you know, we love some constraints.

But I'm curious just, and I know you've long actually been a user of Sora. I think you were early, like an early beta tester. In the artist program, I was invited. I wasn't allowed to join it as a CEO. I had to join it as my creative on my personal email, which I respected.

I'm just curious, like talk to me a little bit about how you found using the tool broadly, how you found, you know, the team used it in the process of creating the ad.

I think anything that gets things out of your head faster is a great thing. You know what I mean? And it doesn't get you to brilliance always. Sometimes it can get you to realize something's wrong faster. You know, I think that's, it's part of the interplay between it. And as I said, it was interesting because yes, we use it to experiment and the creative teams who worked on this use it to understand sort of angles and looks of things, because obviously the simplicity of the cursor and the dot, but then they started playing with things like, can you actually make waves out of it and stuff like that. So they were just experimenting and learning.

Now they took that and they obviously passed that on to Builders Club, who was sort of a production company who helped work on that. And it was complimentary. It wasn't an opposition, but at the same time, which is funny, I know that, you know, our creatives are using it for other massive clients to sort of, as I said, experiment and get things out of their head faster, trial things and all that. That's liberating to any maker and shaper and builder, you know, and just being able to visualize and contextualize and thought process. And that's, it's fantastic. And it's an iterative.

I mean, I think the other thing is these are iterative processes. You know, it doesn't just arrive as a great bolt of lightning from above. So I think just having the malleability to try things, whether that's, you know, a bad idea from the client or otherwise, and really be able to start to show in a way that's not reliant on, we have to go do a shoot to show that, you know, this idea maybe is working or isn't working, or this is what's working about it. And this isn't what's working about it. I also think it's like a really powerful.

Oh, it's incredible, but the reason I love it so much is not so much, of course, selfishly, I love it from a professional sense, as I said, of what it allows us to do. But as you illustrated early on, bringing that kind of opportunity to the kitchen table or, you know, some student's bedroom or something like that, I feel like that's where it's so incredible.

You know, just democratization of.

of opportunity and visualization and writing. I just think that's where it gets, and having that type of firepower at your fingertips is extraordinary. Now, it comes with a lot of responsibility. I don't pretend that there isn't caution, guardrails needed, and all of the above, completely. You know what I mean?

But it is still very much what people are gonna do with it, because I always say, everyone thinks that, you know, there are some clients out there, talk about advertising, right, not that this is, who think that this is just gonna replace the need for great strategy or great creatives and stuff like that, and I'm like, well, no, that's not true, because when everybody has access to this, if you don't have the human element component on top of that or embedded in it, you know, when everyone has access to best practices, and if everything's best practice, then nothing is, if you know what I mean, there always has to be differentiation and personalization and context and all those things, and I, but it's, you know, that's why it's such an exciting time.

I mean, and I think that's true for brand generally. I mean, it's been really interesting, you know, for my career, I've worked in frontier technology brands, and I've really, really seen a change in the understanding that in more competitive, as environments get more competitive, as barriers to entry are lowered, which frankly, democratizing technology does, actually having people choose you because of how you make them feel, because of the values that you're, that you have and that you're communicating, brand, in essence, becomes, in my view, way more important.

So I think there's this really interesting tension, in my view, that mirrors some of the conversation about AI, which is sort of like, oh, as these tools get more powerful, we're just gonna kind of feed the machine and it will do everything for us, and in fact, I actually think, no, there's more of a premium on really smart strategy, really smart human creative ideas, brands that actually say something in culture and that aren't derivative, and to have things that aren't derivative, you need to be pushing the frontier and being holistic in a way that I think is just inherent to humanity, which at the end of the day, is what it's all about.

Completely, no, there's no question it's not gonna get, it is definitely gonna get rid of some menial tasks and some things that we're better moving on from, and it gives us back time to be more productive and deploy ourselves in other things. You know what I mean?

So there's so many layers to this. I mean, no one is angry that they invented aeroplanes because we can get across from Los Angeles to New York now in five hours. They wish the days, you know what I mean? Well, still it's gonna be four, maybe three and a half, I don't know if you've seen them.

Exactly, and I think that's, again, it's what people do with it, but I think it's gonna replace a lot of things, and why not, but the end state and what we want out of our lives is not gonna change and how we get there, and tools that allow us to do things in new ways, that's what moves us forward. You know, that's what moves us forward.

It is, and I think it's the great lessons of literature and philosophy and, you know, all of the humanities around approaching things with a beginner's mind and curiosity, and I think that's really fundamentally at the heart of our relationship, of this project, and frankly, what we're trying to help people understand about the new tools in their pocket and what it can enable for them. And we're learning along the way.

I mean, obviously there are a lot of people on the call who are in the center of actually developing this that know a lot more than us, but we're still, some of us are breathless in trying to keep up with the innovation, what it means, beyond the excitement and euphoria of that, we're sort of trying to understand what it means for the day-to-day, and we sort of look at through what it'll change professions, because I'm also looking at, as I said, from what it's going to allow us to do as a creative entity story, but then on the other part, I'm thinking, okay, I have to re-look at my entire business, the shape of what type of people we need to employ and what skillset they need to have.

Now, again, I'm not upset at that, because again, to a point, you can't stifle progress, but it's just the speed at which, so it's, but then I also count myself lucky that I'm at this stage, infant stage, where I can maybe, hopefully, I'm trying, influence in a little tiny way, you know what I mean, as opposed to just inherit it.

And again, it goes back to the, which is why they're going full circle back to the Superbowl. I mean, it was our introduction to the country and beyond, but we weren't really thinking about it just as a Superbowl moment, you know what I mean? We were trying to sort of set the stage for something beyond that, and set it almost like a grammar for how we want to talk to people, to show some restraint and taste in how we deliver it to them. You know what I mean?

And I think that you see that in itself, and that's when we look at, you know, on tablets and on phones and all that, that thought is put into the UI and, you know, it's like, great. So that, you know, we're trying to keep up and on on what you've already set in motion. We're just part of the storytellers.

I mean, the same thing, like, you know, we do all the New York Times stuff, and our biggest job was to not get in the way of add anything over the top of what they stand for, but just to do it in a unique, creative way, but not try and compete with it, and not have to exaggerate or not try, you know what I mean? And that's the beauty of working with definitive, great, strong companies that stand for something, and are trying to do something distinctive and important. That's like a privilege.

Well, as we said in the ad, all progress has a starting point, and this was really our, this was our starting point. The first ad that the company has ever done, the first Super Bowl ad the company has ever done. You start big, you start big.

Hey, why not, right? The ambition is big. So David, it was so wonderful to talk to you. It's just always such a pleasure, and more to come. Please, thank you very much.

As I said, you know, it's a real privilege to be invited to even help you on this journey, and thank you to everyone there who are doing incredible things. Wonderful, okay, I think Natalie is gonna come back to close us out.

Wow, that was absolutely beautiful. A very heartfelt thank you to David and Kate for joining us in the OpenAI Forum today. Thank you to all who tuned in to listen to their story of longtime friendship and professional collaboration, culminating most recently with the OpenAI Super Bowl ad.

We hope to see more of you, and if you enjoyed our talk this morning, check out the amazing archive of content from the past two years of our community's work under the content tab in the OpenAI Forum. Later this evening, we'll be hosting the NBA Spurs Chief Innovation Officer, Charlie Kurian, for a discussion on how the Spurs became the first NBA team to adopt ChatGPT Enterprise. Hope to see you soon, and have a wonderful day, everyone.