Real Vs AI
- Brand
- Icelandair
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Travel & Hospitality
- Mechanic
- Quiz & Trivia
- Platform
- Web
Objective
Iceland competes in a saturated travel market, and Icelandair needed a way to make its landscapes stick in people's minds while they plan a trip. The brand also had to counter a specific credibility problem: research showed most travelers now distrust "too beautiful" destination photography, suspecting it's AI-touched, so Icelandair set out to prove the real Iceland doesn't need any enhancement.
Solution
The game opens with a simple dare: can you tell real Iceland from AI-generated Iceland? Each round shows two nearly identical landscape shots side by side — a glacier, a waterfall, the northern lights — one an actual photograph, the other AI-generated. The player picks the real one, then moves to the next pair, five rounds in total. Playing requires signing up with an email, with a shot at winning an Icelandair flight credit as the incentive. After the final round, the game reveals which images were real and explains the point of the test before sending the player on to Icelandair's site.
Results
Icelandair's "Real vs AI" game drew over 90,000 sessions and more than 34,000 registrations to play. It held a 50% completion rate — over 46,000 completed playthroughs — with players spending an average of 1 minute 31 seconds per session, adding up to more than 1,600 hours spent with the brand. The game sent over 51,500 clicks through to Icelandair's website.
- 1
Players arrive from a Facebook/Instagram ad, an email send, or a Times Square billboard QR code, all inviting them to test whether they can tell real Iceland from AI.
- 2
A start screen frames the challenge — AI images are flooding feeds, but Iceland's beauty is real — and mentions a prize draw for Icelandair flight credit.
- 3
Players register with contact details and marketing consent before playing, which drove over 34,000 signups from more than 90,000 sessions.
- 4
Each round pairs two images of the same Icelandic scene — one a real photograph, the other AI-generated — and the player taps the one they believe is real, getting instant right-or-wrong feedback.
- 5
The player faces five such pairs in a row, cycling through subjects prone to looking "too beautiful to be true": northern lights, waterfalls, and volcanic landscapes.
- 6
A final screen shows the player's score out of five, and Icelandair delivers the brand message that Iceland is a place where the line between real and unreal blurs on its own, without AI.
- 7
The result screen links out to Icelandair's site to plan a trip, a click-through that generated over 51,500 visits, with players spending about ninety seconds in the game on average.
