Posted in: Nerd Food, Opinion, Pop Culture, streaming, TV, TV, YouTube | Tagged: ai, coca cola, opinion

Coca-Cola Holiday AI 2025: Less Humans, More Animals, Still Creepy

Coca-Cola's new "Holidays Are Coming 2025" ad campaign proves that AI can make animals look just as creepy as humans - so there's that?

It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since Coca-Cola decided to terrify our holiday seasons with a generative AI-created holiday ad. Simply put, one of the most significant issues with generative AI is that it's just a fancy name for stealing other people's shit, adding a slight tweak, and then trying to pass it off as original art. But with 2024's "Holidays Are Coming" campaign, you didn't need to dig beneath the surface to find the obvious problem. It looked creepy as f**k (check it our for yourselves above). The idea behind the holidays is about coming together and a sense of community – not spotlighting what looks to be a town filled with serial killers, a cult way too obsessed with the holidays and Coca-Cola. We didn't even get a good look at Santa, simply a "sleeve cameo" (though considering how the rest of the town looked, not getting a full view of Jolly Old St. Nick was probably a blessing in disguise.

Well, Coca-Cola and AI Studio Secret Level are back with a new ad, and they've realized why there was such a backlash to the ad last year. Too many humans, not enough cute animals. Obviously, right? It couldn't be the whole "AI" aspect of it, right? In this season's ad, we see a convoy of Coca-Cola trucks making their way to their destinations as various animals appear to watch them on their journey to bring carbonated beverages to the masses. We even get an appearance from more than just Santa's sleeve this time (though Coca-Cola makes it clear that Santa was created from archival paintings by Haddon Sundblom, which the company owns). We have a vibe that the switch to animals was done because the viewing public has gotten more accustomed to seeing animals animated, so seeing them AI-created would make the ad more appealing.

Here's a look at what we got for the holidays so you can form your own opinion. Again, setting aside the fact that we would've preferred to have seen this done with shadow puppets rather than AI, the best we can say is that the animals make it less creepy than last year's town of psychos—but not by much, and that's with the bar already set relatively low. Again, why does everything need to look like it wants to kill you, and will be eerily smiling while it does it? Also, there's something a bit more menacing about the crowd scenes in this year's video than what was rolled out last year.

"Last year, people criticized the craftsmanship. But this year the craftsmanship is ten times better," Pratik Thakar, global VP and head of generative AI at Coca-Cola, shared during an interview with THR. "There will be people who criticize — we cannot keep everyone 100 percent happy. But if the majority of consumers see it in a positive way, it's worth going forward." Jason Zada, Secret Level's founder and chief creative officer, added about last year's backlash, "The haters on the Internet are the loudest. A lot of the people complaining last year were from the creative industry who were just afraid — afraid for their jobs, afraid for what it did. But I think the spot tested really well and average people really enjoyed it."

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!