A new class of AI tools can now turn a single photo or a web link into a finished video ad, no creative team required. For small businesses, it’s a revolution. For the global advertising industry, it’s a reckoning.
This is Bratislava—where the Danube cuts between Austria and Hungary. Marek runs a small coffee roastery in the cobbled lanes of the Old Town. His beans are good. His sales are not. He watches his competitor’s slick videos scroll past on his phone and feels the familiar pinch of a budget too small for a marketing agency. Last week, that changed. Marek uploaded a single photograph of his best-selling coffee bag to a new kind of website. He typed a few lines of text. In minutes, an artificial intelligence generated a short, polished video ad. A lifelike avatar held his product, described the tasting notes, and smiled. The cost was less than a single bag of his coffee.
Marek did not hire an ad agency. He used one.
The Agency in the Machine
A new class of generative AI tools is moving from the lab into the real world, and its first target is the creative industry. In Silicon Valley, a startup named Mirage, backed by over $100 million, is building what its CEO calls “frontier models for video”. Marketers using its platform can upload an audio script and a selfie to generate a custom video ad from scratch, complete with an AI version of themselves as the spokesperson. Another company, DeepBrain AI, with offices in Seoul and Palo Alto, goes further. Its platform can take a simple web link to a product page and automatically produce a promotional video for platforms like TikTok or Instagram.
The stated goal is to replace costly studio shoots and complex editing with on-demand content. DeepBrain AI’s chief executive, Eric Jang, called it “a turning point that fundamentally changes the way ads are created”. The promise is the democratization of professional marketing. A small business in Bratislava can now access tools once reserved for global brands with massive budgets.
A Creative Reckoning
But what happens when the creation of advertisements no longer requires cinematographers, editors, actors, or even creative directors? These new platforms are not just tools. They are automated agencies. They write, cast, direct, and produce.
The technology signals a profound shift. Startups are no longer just building impressive AI demonstrations. They are targeting specific, high-cost sectors of the economy and offering to automate them entirely. The focus is on replacing entire workflows, not just simplifying tasks. For thousands of small business owners like Marek, this is a lifeline. For the multi-billion dollar advertising industry, it is an existential challenge.
The ad agency of the future may not be on Madison Avenue. It may be an algorithm on a server, waiting for a single image, a web link, and a few clicks.