With the corpse of Halloween still fresh in the dirt, Coca-Cola has dropped its annual holiday commercials… with a twist.
Driving the news: As was the case last year, these spots were made entirely with generative AI. The difference this time around is that they look a little bit better.
- Last year’s ads were ridiculed for glaring goofs (like Coke delivery trucks moving without their wheels turning), uncanny human faces that gave viewers the creeps.
- Many of those technical glitches have been fixed (look at those wheels roll), and the issue of scary humans has been avoided by putting animals at the centre of the ads.
Big picture: A few days before the Coke ads dropped, Google released its first fully AI ad for Search’s AI Mode, made with its Veo 3 AI video tool. Meanwhile, OpenAI is asking brands to allow their mascots to appear in Sora-made videos.
Why it matters: Many movie-makers and audiences aren’t willing to stomach AI feature films yet, but it looks like the age of gen AI ads is upon us. At this stage in the tech’s life, it can produce adequate short content; plus, ads are meant to be consumed passively anyway.
Bottom line: While Coca-Cola said that around 100 people worked on the campaign, this tech is destined to eliminate jobs. A new analysis found that U.S. job postings for computer graphic artists — people who would have made these ads pre-AI — saw the steepest decline of any profession between 2024 and 2025.—QH