Coca-Cola and AI: the Christmas that makes you discuss | Dall e mart | Dall-e github | Image to image generator | Turtles AI

Coca-Cola launched an AI-created Christmas commercial this year, eliciting strong mixed reactions. While some see this innovation as a step into the future, many viewers criticize the lack of soul and warmth, calling the commercial “dystopian” and “creepy.”

Key points:

• Coca-Cola used AI for its historic “Holidays Are Coming” Christmas commercial.
• The new 15-second spot shows a snowy city and Coca-Cola trucks, but many users consider it spiritless.
• The company defends the choice as an innovative strategy that combines tradition and technology.
• The use of AI makes it possible to reduce production time, but not everyone appreciates the absence of human creativity.

With the arrival of the holidays, Coca-Cola’s Christmas is tinged with futurism. The historic “Holidays Are Coming” advertisement, which has accompanied the start of the Christmas season for decades, this year comes in a new guise: a commercial made entirely with AI. The idea behind the campaign is to merge the legacy of an iconic brand with the possibilities offered by future technology. However, the public response has been anything but enthusiastic. The 15-second commercial, which pays homage to the famous 1995 clip featuring Coca-Cola trucks driving down a snowy road to deliver the long-awaited bottles of cola, drew an avalanche of criticism on social media. Many have called it “dystopian,” “creepy,” and “soulless.” Indeed, the technique used, which saw the company draw on its “Real Magic AI” software, generated images that seem to lack the warm magic that traditionally accompanied Coca-Cola’s festive message. The absence of a human touch, in an advertising context that has always been characterized by its emotional connection with the audience, has left some viewers disappointed, some of whom have commented with strongly critical phrases such as “it’s sad to see that this was created with AI” or even “I just saw the AI-generated Coca-Cola Christmas commercial...how can this happen?” There is no shortage of voices accusing the use of this technology of reducing advertising to a mere marketing operation devoid of the creativity that has always distinguished Coca-Cola, with one user stating that he felt as if he was “witnessing the death of art.” On the other hand, there are also those who see the adoption of AI as a natural evolution of advertising. In an era when speed of production is paramount, the company pointed out that AI allows for a significant reduction in time, going from weeks to days to complete the entire creative process. “More than the cost, it’s the speed that makes the difference,” said Pratik Thakar, vice president in charge of generative AI at Coca-Cola, highlighting how production time has been cut in half through the use of this technology. For experts, this could be the first of many campaigns in which AI will play a central role, not only to reduce costs, but also to open new frontiers in visual imagination, while not betraying tradition. Jason Zada, founder of Secret Level, the AI studio that collaborated with Coca-Cola, stressed that the human element has not been sacrificed, but rather remains the beating heart of the project. The emotional component, he added, is what allows “warmth” to be infused into the final product, despite being created with software.

While Coca-Cola seems to want to celebrate the marriage of tradition and innovation, not everyone is ready to embrace change, especially when it comes to an element as ingrained in popular culture as Christmas advertising, which has always had the ability to touch deep emotional chords. The impression of some users is that, in an age when AI is invading every aspect of our lives, even the things dearest to our hearts are losing their human essence, giving way to a mechanical and sterile representation of reality. While the efficiency and speed of AI are undeniable, there are those who fear that, in the name of increasingly compelling modernization, we are losing something fundamental: the emotion that only a human being can convey with his or her art.

It will therefore be interesting to observe whether this experiment will mark a new chapter in Christmas advertising, or whether, on the contrary, it will be remembered as the beginning of a rift between the past and a future that, for many, already seems too cold and detached.