Generative AI Goes Back to School • AI-Fueled Creativity Opens New Worlds for HP

Tech brand HP is well known for their high-performance OMEN gaming PCs. Less well known: a gaming PC can serve as an indispensable tool for every facet of your life—creative work, school work and, of course, fun. With OMEN you can do it all. That’s why we teamed up with HP to create a back-to-school campaign that highlights the versatility of OMEN PCs. With the goal to engage gamer students, we crafted two 15-second spots that pull audiences into anime and video game-inspired worlds, leaning on the power of AI to amplify creative potential.

Within each spot, our protagonists and viewers are transported into one of two fantastical worlds. To bring these worlds to life, we built a production pipeline that spans three AI-powered technologies: Stable Diffusion, DreamBooth and ControlNet. DreamBooth allowed them to train the AI model to apply specific styles: one based on exaggerated, cartoonish video game graphics, and the other based on the anime aesthetic. We used Stable Diffusion to generate a series of virtual backdrops in these styles, which were minimally retouched by the team. Finally, ControlNet applied those backdrops to a depth map of the virtual scene, allowing the team to capture virtual footage from different angles. Using innovative virtual production techniques, we seamlessly blended our live actors and the virtual worlds.

This project not only delivered impactful films but also redefined the creative process. Our AI-infused pipeline showcases the potential of augmenting traditional visual effects with the limitless versioning possibilities of AI. This same workflow can prove even more powerful in scaling up the brand’s creative ambition through automation—establishing HP as an early leader in realizing AI’s impact on creative marketing, ultimately saving on cost and accelerating time to market.