Imagine one night, you're scrolling through social media on your phone, and the ads start to look remarkably familiar. They're decked out in your favourite colours, are featuring your favourite music and the wording sounds like phrases you regularly use.

Welcome to the future of advertising, which is already here thanks to AI.

Advertising company Cheil UK, for example, has been working with startup Spotlight on using large language AI models to understand people's online activity, and adapt that content based on what the AI interprets an individual's personality to be.

The technology can then mirror how someone talks in terms of tone, phrase and pace to change the text of an ad accordingly, and insert music and colours to match, say, whether the AI deems someone to be introverted or extroverted, or have specific preferences for loud or calm music, or light or dark colours.

The aim is to show countless different ads to millions of people, all unique to them.

Brands in retail, consumer electronics, packaged goods, automotive, insurance and banking are already using the technology to create AI-enhanced, personality-driven ads to target online shoppers.

The AI is able to read what people post on public platforms - Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and other public forums - as well as someone's search history, and, most importantly, what people enter into ChatGPT.

Then, with what it deduces about an individual's personality, the AI overlays that on top of what advertisers already know about people. For example, what part of the country you live in, what age bracket you're in, whether you have children or not, what your hobbies........

© BBC