Graphic Designer's After-Hours AI Ad for Poland Goes Viral

Three evenings of after-hours work, one subscription to a video-generation tool and zero advertising budget - that is how a promotional spot for Poland was made, and it has been circulating across the Polish internet in recent days. Its creator, Jacek Jabłoński, works by day as a graphic designer at one of Poland's major web portals, and in his spare time publishes videos made entirely with the help of artificial intelligence on his Instagram profile "Sztuczna Polska" ("Artificial Poland").

Jabłoński's latest production directly references the second part of the Polish Tourism Organization's campaign. In the AI-generated footage, Nicolaus Copernicus lands on a beach by paraglider, rides a bison, stargazes over a lake in the Masurian region, and eats waffles with whipped cream. According to many online commenters, the result looks surprisingly good for something made at home.

One sleep-deprived person

Jabłoński jokingly describes the personnel costs of his production himself. "The personnel cost is one sleep-deprived person. The film comes together over three evenings," he says about how the clip is made. On top of that there is only the cost of a subscription to Seadance 2.5, the tool he uses to generate the imagery.

The personnel cost is one sleep-deprived person. The film comes together over three evenings - Jacek Jabłoński, creator of the Sztuczna Polska profile

The creator stresses that AI is responsible only for the visual layer - he writes the scripts for his films himself. That distinction matters, because it shows that even in a production made on virtually no budget, the conceptual work still rests with a person, while the generative tool plays an executional role.

Limits of the technology

Jabłoński does not hide the weaknesses of current generative models either. He admits that AI models still get things wrong, so sometimes several versions of the same shot have to be generated before one turns out usable for the final edit. That caveat is worth remembering - the process is not a single click, but repeated generation and picking the best fragments.

Despite these limitations, the creator emphasizes that he treats his profile primarily as a form of learning rather than a source of income. "I'd rather do this as volunteer work, for free. There's too much social pressure otherwise," he explains, adding that instead of spending money on courses, he learns simply by making one production after another. "These are late nights, but that time pays me back in the form of growth," he says about his motivation to keep the project going.

Comparison with the POT campaign

The success of Jabłoński's videos is hard to separate from the context in which they appeared. The official campaign by the Polish Tourism Organization, featuring figures such as Robert Lewandowski, Jason Eisenberg, Alicja Rubik and Lech Wałęsa, cost 7 million zloty and met with a cool reception and criticism from internet users. The contrast between an amateur production and a budget running into millions of zloty became a natural point of reference for commenters.

Jabłoński himself assesses the POT spot in measured terms, with no wish to compete with an institution that has far greater resources at its disposal. He notes, however, that themes considered image-wise "safe," like Copernicus or Chopin, ultimately turned out not to be, given that they are exactly what today's debate about the effectiveness of promoting Poland revolves around.

The human role in AI advertising

The creator of "Sztuczna Polska" has a clear view on the boundaries artificial intelligence should have in the advertising industry. In his opinion, creativity should remain the domain of human intelligence, even as generative tools take over an ever-larger share of the executional work in video production. At the same time, Jabłoński expresses hope that the development of AI will in the future allow ads to be personalized to an individual viewer's taste, rather than a single universal message for everyone.

The Wirtualne Media article gives no specific view or reach figures for the latest Copernicus spot, noting only in general terms that the most popular productions on Jabłoński's profile gather tens of thousands of likes each.

The story shows how quickly the barrier to entry for producing advertising video is changing. A tool costing about 300 zloty a month and a few evenings of one person's work were enough to generate a discussion comparable to the one surrounding a multimillion-zloty institutional campaign. For Polish marketers and agencies, that is a signal that the quality of a concept and script may now matter more than the size of the production budget.