The Ad Turing Test
An experimental competition testing whether AI could create advertising as effectively as human creative teams. Could AI fool the experts?
The experiment
In 2023, BRXND ran an unprecedented experiment at the intersection of artificial intelligence and advertising creativity. The Ad Turing Test challenged both human creative teams and AI systems to create compelling print advertisements from the same brief.
The question: Could AI-generated advertisements be indistinguishable from those created by human creative teams? Could they fool a panel of industry experts?
Named after Alan Turing's famous test of machine intelligence, this competition represented one of the first rigorous attempts to evaluate AI's creative capabilities in a professional advertising context.
The format
The Brief
Participants received a fictional brand brief, complete with logo and brand assets. They had four weeks to generate a single 8.5x11 print advertisement.
The Participants
Creative teams from top advertising schools represented the human side, while AI teams used the latest generative models to create their submissions.
The Rules
AI participants had to generate entire ads using AI only – no manual adjustments, no post-processing. All components had to be synthetically created.
The Judges
A panel of 15 industry leaders from major brands and agencies evaluated the submissions, attempting to identify which were human-made and which were AI-generated.
The impact
The Ad Turing Test sparked crucial conversations about the role of AI in creative industries. It challenged assumptions about what makes advertising "human" and explored the boundaries of machine creativity.
Beyond the competition itself, the experiment provided valuable insights into:
- The current capabilities and limitations of AI in creative work
- How industry professionals evaluate and perceive AI-generated content
- The evolving relationship between human creativity and machine assistance
- Ethical considerations in AI-generated advertising
The event set a precedent for future explorations of AI in advertising and continues to inform discussions about the future of creative work in an AI-augmented world.
Organized by
The Ad Turing Test was conceived and organized by Noah Brier and Tim Hwang as part of the BRXND conference series exploring the intersection of marketing and artificial intelligence.