POSB uses gen AI to age-morph everyday Singaporeans

DBS has launched a new Generative AI created campaign under the POSB umbrella to highlight the importance of financial wellness, emphasising that everyone can achieve their financial goals through saving, growing, protecting, and planning for retirement.

As part of POSB's ongoing "Treat yourself right" campaign, the friendly neighbourhood bank uses AI to age-morph real images of Singaporeans. The campaign aims to depict Singaporeans “morphing” from all walks of life, showing how they age and the progression of their financial needs over time.

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Gen AI was used in the campaign to create realistic visuals by blending live-shot images with digital reconstructions. This enabled the age-morphing effect and allowed the creative team to feature a diverse range of profiles, reflecting Singapore’s diversity.

Currently, over six age-morphing visuals have been produced, with plans for up to 25 more to be developed in the next six months. The visuals were created using a mix of real photography and generative AI to maximise realism and inclusivity. Each visual depicts the chronological progression of age for different individuals, showing how their financial journey evolves.

Bee Bee Lim, executive director at DBS said, “We are always looking for innovative ways to connect with our customers. Working with our creative and production partners at The Secret Little Agency, we have been experimenting with generative AI to create a series of age- morphing visuals that were memorable, bold, and beautiful.”

She added that while the team was enthusiastic about the potential of GenAI, they were also mindful of its perceived impact on the creative community.

“The AI-powered age-morphing effect of the campaign was inspired by the reality that personal finance is deeply personal. By tapping on generative AI, we were able to visualise the unique journeys for each individual, thereby creating a sense of personalisation,” she told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

“That's why we used GenAI as a co-pilot in our creative execution, enhancing human creativity and ensuring that technology complements and enhances the human touch, never replacing it," she added.

Nicholas Ye and Mavis Neo, chief creative officers at The Secret Little Agency added that “We recognise the importance of using AI as a tool to enhance and accelerate the production of our ideas, but it is ultimately the collaboration and creativity of our combined teams at POSB & TSLA that were the main driving force behind the creation and execution of this campaign.”

Ye told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, it wasn't enough to generate AI images and use them as-is, especially when they need to be used at the sort of scale, both in resolution and deployment, we were demanding. A mixture of both real and AI generated imagery was used and further touched-up to render a level of realism befitting of the visual and creative objectives of our campaign.

POSB plans to extend the campaign with additional visuals and digital content to further emphasise financial literacy and encourage practical money-saving steps. With Performics handling media buying, the campaign is set to run until Q3 of 2025. The campaign stems from the finding that a recent YouGov showed only 43% of Singaporeans regularly saving money, 28% having insurance, 26% having investments and 13% putting money into a retirement plan.

The generative AI-driven campaign is a testament to POSB’s innovative approach in using technology to promote financial literacy, helping Singaporeans at every stage of life make better financial decisions.

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