What Are AI Commercials? A Producer's Guide to the Future of Advertising

AI commercials are reshaping how brands tell their stories — and I don't mean the kind of reshaping where an ad agency slaps a chatbot on a landing page and calls it innovation. I'm talking about a fundamental shift in how commercial content gets produced, from concept through final delivery. After 15 years as a writer and producer at NBC, Warner Bros, and Paramount, I've watched production paradigms evolve. But nothing has moved the needle like what's happening right now with AI-driven commercial production.

At Bizarre Bunny, we produce AI commercials every day. And the question I hear most often from brand managers and CMOs is simple: what exactly are AI commercials, and should I care? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is what this article is about.

Defining AI Commercials in 2025

An AI commercial is a video advertisement where artificial intelligence tools handle significant portions of the visual production pipeline. That could mean AI-generated imagery, AI-assisted video synthesis, AI-powered editing, or some combination of all three. The key distinction is that these commercials don't rely on traditional film crews, sound stages, or location shoots for their core visual content.

But — and this is critical — they absolutely rely on human creative direction. An AI commercial without a strong creative vision is just a tech demo. Nobody wants to watch a tech demo. People want to feel something. That emotional connection still requires a human brain behind the wheel.

The tools involved include platforms like Sora, Runway, Kling, and Veo. Each has its strengths. Sora handles certain types of motion and scene composition beautifully. Runway excels at stylistic transformations. Kling delivers impressive character consistency. Veo brings photorealistic environments. A skilled producer knows when to reach for which tool — the same way a traditional DP knows when to use a 50mm versus a 24mm lens.

How AI Commercials Actually Get Made

The process isn't as different from traditional production as you might think. It still starts with a brief. A brand comes to us with a message they need to communicate, an audience they need to reach, and (usually) a budget that's tighter than they'd like it to be. Standard operating procedure in advertising.

From there, we develop the concept. Script. Storyboard. Shot list. This phase looks identical to what happens at any production company. The difference kicks in at production itself.

Instead of booking a crew, renting equipment, scouting locations, and coordinating talent, we move into what I call the generation phase. Each shot in the storyboard gets produced using the AI tool best suited for that specific visual requirement. A sweeping aerial shot of a cityscape might use one platform. A close-up of a product in use might require another. A lifestyle scene with human characters might need a third.

Then comes iteration. AI generation rarely delivers a perfect shot on the first attempt. The craft is in refining — adjusting prompts, tweaking parameters, sometimes blending outputs from multiple tools. It's a process that demands both technical understanding and visual instinct. You need to know what good looks like before you can guide the machine toward it.

Post-production follows: editing, color grading, sound design, music, and final delivery. This phase remains largely conventional, though AI tools are making inroads here too.

Why AI Commercials Matter for Brands

Three reasons, and they're all practical.

Speed. A traditional commercial production takes 6-12 weeks from concept to delivery. AI commercial production can compress that to days. Not because we're cutting corners, but because we're eliminating the logistical overhead that eats up most of a traditional timeline. No location permits. No weather delays. No talent scheduling conflicts. No equipment shipping.

Cost. I'll be straightforward: AI commercials cost significantly less than traditional productions. We're talking about eliminating crew costs, equipment rental, location fees, travel, catering, insurance — the operational expenses that inflate production budgets. The creative investment stays the same. The operational overhead drops dramatically.

Volume. When production costs drop and timelines shrink, brands can produce more content. More versions. More variations for different audiences, platforms, and markets. The economics of AI commercial production make it viable to create content that would have been prohibitively expensive under the traditional model.

The Quality Question

Every conversation about AI commercials eventually lands here: is the quality good enough? The honest answer depends on what you're comparing against and what you're trying to achieve.

If your benchmark is a $2 million Super Bowl spot with A-list talent and the world's top director, then no — AI isn't there yet. But that's not the comparison most brands should be making. The relevant comparison is against the mid-range commercial production that constitutes the vast majority of advertising: regional spots, social media content, digital campaigns, product launches.

In that arena, AI commercials are already competitive. And they're improving at a pace that should make every traditional production company pay attention. Six months ago, AI-generated video had obvious tells — uncanny motion, temporal inconsistencies, texture artifacts. Today, many of those issues have been resolved or dramatically reduced. Six months from now, the gap will narrow further.

What Makes a Great AI Commercial

The same thing that makes any great commercial: story. A clear message. An emotional hook. A reason for the viewer to care. The production method is just the delivery mechanism.

I spent 15 years writing and producing content for networks and studios. The throughline across every successful project was never the camera we used or the budget we had. It was whether we told a story that connected with the audience. AI commercials are no different.

The producers who will succeed in this space are the ones who understand narrative craft and happen to work with AI tools. Not the other way around. If you start with the technology and try to bolt a story onto it, you'll produce something that looks impressive for about five seconds and then fails to convert a single customer.

The Bizarre Bunny Approach to AI Commercials

Our process at Bizarre Bunny starts with understanding the brand's audience — not their product features, not their competitive advantages, but their audience. What does the viewer need to feel? What action do we want them to take? Every creative decision flows from those two questions.

From there, we develop a narrative framework. Script the spot. Storyboard it. Only then do we start thinking about which AI tools will execute each shot most effectively. The vision drives the tool selection, never the reverse.

This approach produces AI commercials that don't feel like AI commercials. They feel like commercials. Period. The technology disappears behind the story, which is exactly where it belongs.

Where AI Commercials Are Headed

The trajectory is clear: AI commercial production will become the default for a substantial portion of the advertising market within the next two to three years. The tools are improving exponentially. The cost advantage is too significant to ignore. The speed advantage is too compelling to resist.

Brands that start understanding and utilizing AI commercials now will have a meaningful advantage over those that wait. Not because early adoption is inherently valuable, but because the learning curve is real. Understanding how to brief an AI production team, how to evaluate AI-generated content, and how to integrate AI-produced assets into a broader marketing strategy — these are skills that take time to develop.

The advertising industry has been disrupted before — by digital, by social, by mobile. Each disruption created winners and losers based largely on who adapted fastest. AI is the next wave, and it's already breaking.

If you're curious about what AI commercials could look like for your brand, Bizarre Bunny would be glad to walk you through the possibilities. We're building the future of advertising production, and we'd love to show you what that looks like.