Did artificial intelligence ruin Christmas? Coca-Cola's neural network-generated commercial has been heavily criticised

Every year the Coca-Cola Corporation releases a commercial, which is a kind of the start of the Christmas holidays.

Coca-Cola Christmas commercials are always beautiful, bright, thoughtful, memorable and filled with festive atmosphere.

The year 2024 was no exception and the festive red and white Coca-Cola trucks are on their way, but many people didn't appreciate the promotional video.

Here's What We Know

The Coca-Cola Corporation commissioned California-based advertising agency Pereira OʼDell and its partner Silverside AI to remake the iconic Holidays Are Coming video.

The creators of the promotional video decided to be on trend and used artificial intelligence, including Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, Paccto, Director Magic and DALL-E, to work on it.

The video has already been published in the public domain, but viewers have not appreciated it. There are the favourite trucks, the famous melody, and shots similar to the ones the audience is so used to, but it doesn't evoke festive emotions. It looks too artificial, soulless and does not hook the viewer, unlike the old adverts.

П. J. Pereira, co-founder and creative chairman of advertising agency Pereira O'Dell said that in a few days they created 110 different versions of the commercial. Well, they could have created a million versions of "The Holiday is Coming" - no one doubts the speed of AI, but it is obvious that these programmes cannot yet replace human creativity, imagination and feelings put into the work.

We leave the clip from the early 2000s for comparison:

Source: Pereira OʼDell