Lost In Found Podcast: James Fox of Daydrm.ai

Is There An Algorithm For Creativity?

Have the best creatives and strategists in the world simply developed the best mental algorithms? What if you could use artificial intelligence to build and iterate on those algorithms? That’s the basic idea behind Daydrm.ai, a Large Language Model trained on advertising ideas sourced from Cannes, The One Show and D&AD.

In this episode of the LOST IN FOUND podcast, we sit down with James Fox of Daydrm.ai to talk about creativity, algorithms and everything in between.

James Fox started his career at London ad agency St Luke's where he built award winning strategies for IKEA and Emirates Airlines. In the US, he ran strategy for United Airlines at Fallon, winning Gold Effies and Emmies. He ran Levi's at BBH and AT&T at BBDO. He was the Global CSO at MullenLowe. And most recently he was Managing Director, Global Head of Brand Strategy and Research at Goldman Sachs, where he upgraded their brand positioning and identity.

Now James is helping to train what he and software designer Aaron Adler hope will be the shared strategic brain of the future. Aaron was an award-winning creative director for decades before becoming an AI entrepreneur. He’s described Daydrm.ai as simply a representation of his own creative process.

“When my creative partner Ari and I were in ad school,” writes Aaron on the Daydrm.ai blog. “We'd spend hours looking through old Communication Arts Advertising Annuals and Luhrzer's Archives to marvel at the best creative advertising produced around the world. In other words, we were uploading training data through our eyes to use with the algorithms between our ears. We were trying to learn what good advertising looked like, so we could create it ourselves.”

Daydrm.ai isn’t meant to replace creatives. Rather, it allows creatives to experiment quickly with their ideas. Or get unstuck. Or go “one step upstream to where the strategists and brand planners play.” Here's an example of the kind of output you might get on Daydrm.ai if you wanted to generate an idea for a creative brief for peloton. Note the inputs.