A farmer floating in a pool of eggs. An alien chugging beer. An older man, draped in an American flag, screaming, “Indiana gonna win baby.” The chaotic scenes are all part of a new AI-generated ad from sports betting marketplace Kalshi, which aired Wednesday during Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
“The world’s gone mad, trade it,” the commercial’s tagline read, following the 30-second collection of surreal scenes.
In a recent thread on X, the ad’s director explained how he made the clip for just $2,000.
“Kalshi hired me to make the most unhinged NBA Finals commercial possible,” PJ Accetturo, a self-described AI filmmaker, wrote on Wednesday. “Network TV actually approved this GTA-style madness.”
Accetturo said he made the ad using Veo 3, Google’s latest AI video generator. A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed to BI that the company hired Accetturo to make the ad and that it was generated entirely using Veo 3.
“Kalshi asked me to create a spot about people betting on various markets, including the NBA Finals,” Accetturo wrote on X. “I said the best Veo 3 content is crazy people doing crazy things while showcasing your brand. They love GTA VI. I grew up in Florida. This idea wrote itself.”
He said that he started by writing a rough script, turned to Gemini to generate a shot list and prompts, pasted it into Veo 3, and made the finishing touches in editing software.
To write the script, he said he asked Kalshi’s team for pieces of dialogue they wanted to include, then thought up “10 wild characters in unhinged situations to say them.” Accetturo said that he got help from Gemini and ChatGPT for coming up with ideas and working them into a script.
A screenshot he posted of this stage of his process showed dialogue like “Indiana gonna win baby” and “I’m all in on OKC” alongside characters like “rizzed out grandpa headed to the club” and “old lady in front of pickup truck that says ‘fresh manatee’ in a cooler behind her.”
Accetturo said he then asked Gemini to turn every shot description into a Veo 3 prompt.
“I always tell it to return 5 prompts at a time—any more than that and the quality starts to slip,” he wrote on X. “Each prompt should fully describe the scene as if Veo 3 has no context of the shot before or after it. Re-describe the setting, the character, and the tone every time to maintain consistency.”
Accetturo said it took 300 to 400 generations to get 15 usable clips.
“We were not specifically looking for an AI video at first, but after getting quotes from production companies that were in the six or seven figure range with timelines that didn’t fit our needs, we decided to experiment, and that’s when we made the decision to go with AI and hire PJ,” the Kalshi spokesperson told BI. “Given the success of this first ad, we are absolutely planning on doing more with AI.”
The spokesperson said the video went from idea to live ad in three days, cost roughly $2,000 to make, and is on track to finish with 20 million impressions across mediums.
Accetturo told BI that he was “paid very well for the project” and now makes a “lot more as an AI director” than he did for live action contracts, which often involved weeks of work before and after the shoot compared to the few days the Kalshi ad required.
“The client got an insane ad for a great rate on a blistering timeline, and I got paid really well, while working in my underwear,” he said.
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