I was sitting in the movie theater with my mom, freshly buttered popcorn in hand, ready to see Dave Franco in Now You See Me 3, when our previews were abruptly interrupted by Coca-Cola’s latest holiday commercial. While my mom was enjoying the cute polar bears, I was frowning. When he asked what was wrong, I told him HE It was the AI hype that I couldn’t escape lately.
McDonald’s and Coca-Cola seem determined to destroy our Christmas spirit this year with artificial intelligence. Every company has released a Christmas themed ad and every ad is terrible in its own way. and if it is online Game Let’s just say I’m not the only one who loves using AI.
The latest culprit is McDonald’s, whose ad features a string of Christmas-themed nonsense and includes a parody of the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” about how it’s actually the most horrible time of the year. The ad is only 30 seconds long and is aimed solely at the Netherlands, but has already generated so much hate online that the company has pulled it. delete the video on your side. The marketing agency behind the ad, The Sweetshop Film, still has the video available website.
The McDonald’s ad is clearly powered by artificial intelligence, with short clips linked by a series of sharp jumps. The text is not legible from a distance, the finer details are missing and just has that AI look that I immediately recognized as an AI journalist. On the other hand, Coca-Cola’s advertising is a bit more well thought out. A Coca-Cola truck drives through a winter landscape and enters a snowy town, and the forest animals wake up and follow the truck and the contents of the soda bottle to a lighted Christmas tree in a square. However, this video clearly also contains elements generated by artificial intelligence.
Although I was disappointed, I was not surprised by the publicity and subsequent negative reactions. Especially in the last year, creative generative AI tools have increased, with many AI tools. specially designed for marketers. They promise to help with content creation, workflow automation and data analysis. A large majority (94%) of marketers have a budget dedicated to AI and three quarters expect this budget to increase. Canvas Marketing and Artificial Intelligence Report 2025.
What is absolutely exhausting is the decision by big companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola to rely so heavily on artificial intelligence. McDonald’s generated revenue of $25.9 billion 2024and coke Do 47.1 billion dollars. Do these companies expect us to tolerate AI nonsense when they could have spent a fraction of that amount on hiring a real animator or videographer?
If AI is here to stay in the advertising world, it’s worth analyzing how it’s being used and where we as media consumers don’t want it to be used. And while this is by no means a defense of Coca-Cola or artificial intelligence, there is at least one thing the company did right with this particular ad.
Discover artificial intelligence in Coca-Cola advertising
The “Holiday is coming” ad is one New edition the popular Coca-Cola ad from 1995. In a Behind the scenes videoCoca-Cola explains how it happened. It is clear that artificial intelligence was used to create the animals. But I’m not sure I think the company went “pixel by pixel” to create its four-legged friends.
Coca-Cola’s AI animals don’t look realistic; They look like AI. There is some detail in his fur, but these finer elements are not as defined as they could be. They are also not uniform over the entire body of the animal. You can see that the fur becomes less detailed as the animal moves forward. This kind of detailed work is something that AI video generators have a hard time with, but a (human) animator would probably have recognized and fixed it.
As the truck passes them, the animals make exaggerated surprised faces and make perfect circles with their mouths. This is another sign of artificial intelligence. The behind-the-scenes video shows someone clicking different AI variants of a sea lion’s snout, a common feature of AI programs. There is also an example of a function that is very similar. Generative fill in Photoshop. Googling I spy video generator It has definitely been used at least once.
All I want for Christmas are AI labels
There is exactly one thing that Coca-Cola got right, and that is the reveal of the AI at the beginning of the video. It’s one thing to use AI to create content. That’s very different from lying about it. Tags are one of the best tools we have to help anyone finding content determine whether it’s real or artificial intelligence. Many social media apps allow you to easily change a setting before you post.
It’s very easy to say it outright, but many brands and developers don’t disclose their use of AI for fear of creating hate. If you don’t want people to hate you for using AI, don’t use it! But it’s a waste of time for people to sit there and argue about whether you’ve done it or not. The fact that AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from real photos and videos is exactly why we need to be aware of it when using it.
It is our collective responsibility as a society to be transparent about how we use AI. Social media platforms try to tag AI-generated content, but these systems aren’t perfect. Let’s be clear: Coca-Cola didn’t lie to us about this AI-generated content. This is a very, very low bar, but many others do not reach it. (I’m looking at you, Mariah Carey and Zipporah. Have you used artificial intelligence? Tell us.)
Artificial intelligence in advertising
In June, Vogue readers were outraged when the American magazine ran an ad for Guess. with a model generated by artificial intelligence. models of the time he expressed himself about how artificial intelligence complicates the work with campaigns. Eagle-eyed fans have caught J.Crew with “AI photography” a month later. Toys R Us made headlines when it launched last year A strange ad with an AI giraffe.However, it was built using an older version of OpenAI’s Sora.
What really struck me about Guess and J.Crew’s use of AI was how clear it was that AI was being used instead of real models and photographers. While the use of artificial intelligence at Coca-Cola and Toys R Us has been equally evident, AI animals have not achieved the same results. As the president of Toys R Us said, “We wouldn’t hire a giraffe.” Honesty points?
However, it is more than likely that real people lost their jobs creating these AI ads. Coca-Cola commercials could have been created and probably improved by using animators, designers and illustrators. Job loss due to artificial intelligence worries Americansand people working in the creative industries they are surely in danger. This is not because AI image and video generators are ready to completely replace workers. In fact, AI’s call to lead in efficiency offers leaders simple logic. That’s exactly what happened to Amazon when the company laid off thousands of employees.
It’s easy to look at AI Christmas ads from Coca-Cola and McDonald’s and dismiss them as yet another tone-deaf corporate mistake, especially when there are so many other things to worry about. But in our strange new AI reality, it’s important to highlight the quiet moments that normalize this significant and controversial technology, as well as the groundbreaking moments.
That’s why I think I’ll be drinking a Pepsi Poppi Cranberry Fizz instead of a Coke Zero this holiday season.