Coca-cola’s Ai Holiday Ad Sparks Controversy For Not Being The ‘real Thing’

For more than a century, Atlanta beverage giant Coca-Cola has released holiday ads that have closely shaped much of the imagery associated with Christmas. Think Santa Claus and polar bears. This year, some of Coca-Cola’s holiday ads airing on TV look a little different. They’re generated by artificial intelligence. In what is the company’s largest push into using AI in advertising, Coca-Cola partnered with generative AI companies to make new iterations of its classic 1995 ad “Holidays Are Coming.” Shots of lighted Coca-Cola trucks on snowy roads and mountains, smiling townspeople and Christmas trees rising above an idyllic village, among other familiar holiday imagery, were all rendered using AI models. In a statement, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola said the company is “always exploring new ways to connect with fans and experiment with different approaches” and dedicated to “creating the highest level of work at the intersection of human creativity and technology.” Silverside AI, one of the firms commissioned by Coke, provided further detail about the project on their website. A project of the same scale as the holiday ad would typically take more than 12 months, Silverside wrote on its website.