Marketing: Telekom wants to use generated images from Black Forest Labs

Images used by Deutsche Telekom for marketing purposes will soon be generated using AI. Specifically, the telecommunications provider is using the Flux model from Black Forest Labs, the Black Forest-based AI company that previously cooperated with Elon Musk's xAI and can currently also be found in Mistral's le Chat.

"When we use AI images, they have to look realistic and fit in with our company. And not as a random product, but in a targeted and controlled manner," explains Deutsche Telekom in a press release. This includes ensuring that the Deutsche Telekom logo is displayed correctly. Something that image generators still struggle with here and there. Claudia Nemat from Deutsche Telekom's Board of Management for Technology and Innovation says that the company is delighted to have found an AI technology in Black Forest Labs that works and is "Made in Germany".

The image generator is called Flux and is available in a customized version for Telekom – as Flux Pro. Particular attention has been paid to character, object and color consistency, i.e. the correct retention of elements or persons and the color. It goes without saying that the magenta color tone must always be hit exactly.

AI from the Black Forest

The people behind Flux and Black Forest Labs include co-founder Andreas Blattmann. He says that the aim of Flux is to focus on professional image generation. "On the other hand, our collaboration shows that 'AI made in Europe' is by no means outdated, but rather defines the state of the art, particularly in the areas of text-to-image and text-to-video, and thus enables new and innovative use cases that are very interesting for established companies."

Specifically, Deutsche Telekom's marketing employees will have access to the model in future in order to generate images for their work. Telekom cites the following example prompt: "A group of smiling young people taking a selfie on a spring day on the beach in Barcelona. They take the picture with a T Phone." Only around 20 motifs were needed to train the model with brand-specific images. Deutsche Telekom also works with photo model agencies to generate AI images based on real models – while respecting personal rights.

Black Forest Labs was also the image generator in xAI's Grok for a time. However, it was replaced there by its own model, Aurora. Flux has recently been made available in le Chat by Mistral from France; the AI chatbot is available as an app.

(emw)