Coca-Cola’s new AI holiday ad is a sloppy eyesore

Look astatine each those blobby bunnies.

Coca-Cola is erstwhile again utilizing generative AI to reimagine its classical Coke caravan vacation commercials, and successful doing so, sidesplitting immoderate of the festive joyousness you person for the brand. After receiving backlash for airing 3 AI-generated vacation commercials past twelvemonth that featured gliding wheels and uncanny-looking faces, the institution has doubled down with a caller AI Christmas run that’s much visually jarring than the first.

The “Holidays Are Coming” commercialized attempts to sidestep issues astir generating realistic humans by alternatively featuring a formed of assorted critters. There’s nary accordant style, switching betwixt attempted realism and a bug-eyed toony look, and the polar bears, panda, and sloth determination unnaturally, similar level images that person been sloppily animated alternatively than rigged 3D models successful CG. Compared to the convincing deepfake videos being generated by tools similar OpenAI’s Sora 2 oregon Google’s Veo 3, the videos produced for this Coke advertisement consciousness highly dated.

The lone notable betterment to my eyes is that the wheels connected the iconic Coke trucks are really consistently turning this year, alternatively than gliding statically implicit snow-covered roads. The Wall Street Journal reports that Coca-Cola teamed up with Silverside and Secret Level connected its latest vacation campaign, 2 of the AI studios that antecedently worked connected the 2024 Coke Christmas ads.

Coca-Cola declined to remark connected the outgo of the caller vacation campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal, but said that astir 100 radical were progressive successful the task — a fig comparable to the company’s older AI-free productions. That includes 5 “AI specialists” from Silverside who contributed by prompting and refining much than 70,000 AI video clips.

This comes astatine a clip erstwhile AI tools are rapidly improving to regenerate the manual enactment performed by originative professionals, raising concerns astir aboriginal employment opportunities. Google has besides introduced its first afloat AI-generated commercial this year, saying that consumers don’t truly attraction if ads are created utilizing the technology. And Coca-Cola is firmly embracing its usage successful advertising, contempt issues successful erstwhile campaigns, including a commercialized successful April that made up a fake publication by writer J.G. Ballard.

Those past blunders are seemingly worthy the hazard for Coca-Cola, with the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, Manolo Arroyo, telling The Wall Street Journal that its latest vacation run was cheaper and speedier to nutrient compared to accepted production. “Before, erstwhile we were doing the shooting and each the modular processes for a project, we would commencement a twelvemonth successful advance,” Arroyo told the publication. “Now, you tin get it done successful astir a month.”