Never Done Evolving feat. Serena

Why it works

For Nike's 50th anniversary, AKQA staged a tennis match that could never happen: Serena Williams at 17, when she won her first Grand Slam title at the 1999 US Open, against Serena at 35, winning the 2017 Australian Open. Machine-learning models built from archive footage and tournament data captured each era's playing style, and an adaptation of Stanford's vid2player technique animated the two versions so they could rally against each other. Released two days after Williams announced her retirement, the simulated final was streamed as a live virtual match on Nike's YouTube channel. It is studied as a rare AI campaign in which the technology serves a story about growth rather than standing in for one. The Cannes 2023 Digital Craft jury, whose president said more than half of the 600 entries leaned on AI or machine learning, gave it the Grand Prix. AKQA reports more than 130,000 simulated games and a record for organic views on Nike's channel.