AI is coming to town this holiday season — and soda lovers aren’t feeling festive about it.
Coca-Cola is receiving backlash online after creating an AI-generated Christmas commercial, which has been slammed as a “creepy dystopian nightmare.”
Paying homage to Coca-Cola’s 1995 “Holidays Are Coming” campaign, the new, 15-second advert depicts a fleet of cherry red trucks driving down a snowy road to deliver ice-cold bottles of cola to customers in a festively decorated town.
The video has a disclaimer in small print, “created by Real Magic AI,” referencing Coca-Cola’s AI software.
While the campaign offers a snapshot of what the future of commercials might look like, many consumers were not feeling the holiday spirit, criticizing the beverage brand’s clip as “garbage,” “ugly” and “lazy.”
“The world is so over if the Christmas Coca-Cola advert is made with AI,” one user wrote on X, per The Independent.
“Sad to see this was made with AI generated program,” another added in the YouTube comments.
“Just saw an AI generated Coca Cola commercial on TV… genuinely how are we letting this happen?” one X user asked, per Daily 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.”
But Jason Zada, the founder of the AI studio Secret Level, one of the three Coca-Cola collaborated with on the project, argued that there is still a human component that creates the “warmth” in the clip.
Zada told AdAge that harnessing generative AI for something as complex as a commercial is not as easy as just pressing a button, and Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola’s vice president and global head of generative AI, explained that the company is bridging its “heritage” with “the future and technology” with the next-gen campaign.
Using the technology, he argued, saves money — and, not to mention, time.
“More than cost, it’s the speed,” Thakar told 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.”
However, it’s still left some Coca-Cola fans feeling far from festive, saying the video lacks emotion.
The Post has reached out to Coca-Cola for further comment.