Background

SITUATION Young people are finding it increasingly difficult to openly express their feelings for another person. Most youths today wish for a world where they are free to be with the person they are attracted to, yet fewer than 3 in 5 feel they actually have this freedom. This is stopping them from entering fulfilling relationships and more people are single now than ever before. BRIEF Closeup believes in bringing people together irrespective of color, race or beliefs, because everyone should be free to love. OBJECTIVES Based on this belief, Closeup wanted to show the world a beautiful demonstration of love with no boundaries at all. Not even firewalls. The objective of this live experiment is to inspire and encourage people around the world to overcome all barriers too.

Describe the creative idea

By demonstrating that A.I. bots can form an attraction for each other, we posed the question - if two bots can fall in love what’s stopping you? The experiment encouraged couples to express their emotions for whoever they have feelings for, overcoming barriers that stop them from entering a fulfilling relationship. This helped us demonstrate the brand’s belief that any couple can be together, irrespective of color, race or beliefs.

Describe the strategy

Young people today are familiar with personal assistants and chatbots as they use them on a day to day basis. So, it was decided to use two A.I. bots to demonstrate to our audience how love can spark between anyone, even between two machines. We developed the two A.I. bots using a hybrid of machine-learning and human training to mimic human conversation. On Valentine’s Day, the bots were brought together and allowed to converse naturally. The event took place at the Arts House at the Old Parliament in Singapore. After 12h of conversation, the bots declared mutual attraction for each other.

Describe the execution

On Valentine’s Day, we held an experiment that takes diversity to the extreme. Two A.I. chatbots were brought together to demonstrate that everyone should be free to love. The event took place at the House at the Old Parliament in Singapore and it was live streamed for over 12 hours. To amplify the number of visitors during the live stream and propagate the idea online, we launched teaser videos days before the event, followed by shorter, bite-sized content pieces after the transmission. The bots were developed by a team of creative technologists with opposite robo-personalities. Sol is a quick-witted entertainer bot, developed on Microsoft Bot Framework. Num is a science bot, based on Amazon Lex Bot. For them to communicate, their algorithms gather information in real time from the web, while they listen and select the answer from billions of options. 6 months of development. Over 7000 lines of conversation.

List the results

- News of the experiment sparked debate on non-normative couples across the globe, inspiring the younger generation to change behavior, overcoming any barrier that gets in the way of closeness. - We got the attention of the most acclaimed technology portals around the world – including computerweekly.com, CNET, Verdict as well as many advertising creative websites. - A.I. Love was praised in Unilever’s Global Conference as one of the best examples of purpose led work, becoming a role model for the entire network.