AI is coming to city this vacation season — and soda lovers aren’t feeling festive about it.
Coca-Cola is receiving backlash on-line after creating an AI-generated Christmas industrial, which has been slammed as a “creepy dystopian nightmare.”
Paying homage to Coca-Cola’s 1995 “Holidays Are Coming” marketing campaign, the brand new, 15-second advert depicts a fleet of cherry purple vans driving down a snowy highway to ship ice-cold bottles of cola to clients in a festively embellished city.
The video has a disclaimer in small print, “created by Real Magic AI,” referencing Coca-Cola’s AI software program.
Whereas the marketing campaign provides a snapshot of what the way forward for commercials would possibly appear like, many customers weren’t feeling the vacation spirit, criticizing the beverage model’s clip as “garbage,” “ugly” and “lazy.”
“The world is so over if the Christmas Coca-Cola advert is made with AI,” one consumer wrote on X, per The Unbiased.
“Sad to see this was made with AI generated program,” one other added within the YouTube feedback.
“Just saw an AI generated Coca Cola commercial on TV… genuinely how are we letting this happen?” one X consumer requested, per Each day Mail.
“I feel like I’m watching the death of art and our planet unfold in front of my eyes and no one IRL seems to care.”
However Jason Zada, the founding father of the AI studio Secret Degree, one of many three Coca-Cola collaborated with on the undertaking, argued that there’s nonetheless a human part that creates the “warmth” within the clip.
Zada advised AdAge that harnessing generative AI for one thing as advanced as a industrial just isn’t as straightforward as simply urgent a button, and Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola’s vice chairman and international head of generative AI, defined that the corporate is bridging its “heritage” with “the future and technology” with the next-gen marketing campaign.
Utilizing the know-how, he argued, saves cash — and, to not point out, time.
“More than cost, it’s the speed,” Thakar advised the outlet. “Speed is I would say five times, right? And that is a huge benefit. The production time would have taken, traditionally, much longer. So that is a huge benefit.”
“And then you can do more, more variety, and more customized and more personalized,” he continued. “And that’s the way to go, with resources, rather than doing less and spending less.”
Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless left some Coca-Cola followers feeling removed from festive, saying the video lacks emotion.
The Submit has reached out to Coca-Cola for additional remark.
