Most people have never seen farm animals grow to a mature age because they only live a fraction of their natural lives in the food industry. In nature, cows, pigs, and chickens can live up to 48, 23, and 20 years, respectively, but in today's global food system, they may only live months or days. NotCo, a global food tech company, has developed an A.I., called Giuseppe, that is able to recreate the flavor and texture of animal products using only plants. With the advancement of generative art A.I., NotCo can now use A.I. to educate people on the disparity between the lifespans of animals in nature and those in the conventional food system. The global campaign was deployed across six countries, translated to three languages and had a budget of under 100k, and follows the company's announcement that it has become a Certified B Corporation.

The campaign aims to highlight the disparity between the lifespans of animals raised in nature and those in the meat industry. It challenges the audience to reflect on if they have ever seen such animals at an old age, leading to the realization that these older animals are so rare to come across that these images had to be created using A.I. The use of A.I. is relevant to the concept and the brand, as all their plant-based foods are produced using this technology. These A.I. generated images give the audience an idea of how these animals should look like in nature, demonstrating how a plant-based diet benefits not only us and the planet but also these animals who deserve to live a full life. And how A.I. can assist in making this all possible.

A combination of A.I. tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and ChatGPT was used to create hyper-realistic portraits and time-lapses that showed farm animals' natural appearance and lifespans, contrasting them with their food industry lives. The A.I. tools were trained in pre-production, and stills and time-lapses were made in production. We trained the tools to achieve the same aesthetics of photography, such as a Leica Noctilux lens with shallow depth of field, contour light, and even the sentiment of these animals at the end of a happy life. ChatGPT was used to achieve the best prompts to generate images of animals at different ages on Midjourney. The visuals use Midjourney design elements in the headline, which refers to the prompt used to create the images. Stable diffusion was used to turn an average of 300 fully A.I.-generated stills into dynamic time-lapses. The global campaign was shared across eight countries until the submission date.

In countries worldwide, meat consumption is deeply ingrained in the culture and a staple of everyday food. This has led to a high demand for animal products, which has negative environmental consequences such as deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly 40% of the world's surface is used for farming, and almost 80% of the farmland is used for livestock. NotCo believes that these cultural attitudes towards meat consumption and environmental resources depleted for production need to be reexamined and, where applicable, innovative alternatives as created by new technologies used in place. These technologies will not only feed a growing global population, expected to rise from 8 billion to 10 billion in 30 years, but also support new, clean industries that will make the world more sustainable. Our campaign, launched during Earth Month, symbolizes the deep connection between the industry, the planet, and all its inhabitants.