Coca-Cola’s AI ads this year were supposed to be different. What will be done with smoother techniques, unlike last year’s bashing. Unlike last year’s controversy, it is more accepted by consumers. Producers had hoped that critics’ opinions might also be quelled.
That’s it.
Days after the animated “Holidays Are Coming” spot was released, the backlash among the creative class appears to be as strong as it was last year when Coke released the AI ”Holidays are Coming” spot.
of evil and good wife Creator Robert King posted on X that the animal-centered animation “worked well as Zootopia” and suggested that Disney might want to consider suing Cora in addition to Midjourney (unlikely).
Anti-AI Hollywood concept artist Reid Southen called it “stupid, ugly garbage.” Another illustrator, Carla Ortiz, also called for a boycott.
and, gravity falls Writer Alex Hirsch, who wrote harshly about the ad last year, went back to the well in November, quoting a Coke executive who said, “‘The genie is out of the bottle, and you’re not going to put it back in the bottle’ — your boss is going to fire you at Christmas.” the hollywood reporter Story from Monday.
This kind of criticism was something Jason Zada, founder of LA-based AI Studio, the creator of the main ad (of which there are several versions), was prepared. Zada, whose company Secret Rebel was involved in last year’s ad, believes people don’t understand the creativity that goes into the work, which includes many animated animals and an AI Santa Claus generated from Coca-Cola archive images. talk to THR He argued on Friday, days before the ad’s release, that making an AI commercial is essentially no different from making an animated movie. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
First, please tell us about the response to last year’s advertisement. Are you surprised?
We did a Coca-Cola spot and it had a very mixed reaction. Because at the time, I think it was something that a lot of ordinary consumers didn’t understand yet. But last year was crazy. Things are upsetting in Hollywood, but brands are doing their best. The Coca-Cola ad sent a wake-up call to many people in marketing that this is OK. It changed the conversation. There are really traditional ways to do it, and there are also completely new ways to do it.
Do you understand people’s criticism that a completely new method is actually just a reuse of an old method, meaning that the LLM is not really a departure, but just a rehash?
There’s a lot of human artistry. This new ad was created by 20 people. There was a lot of hand-drawn character designs, and a lot of sketches and world-building.
It’s more than last year, but it’s less than you would normally see in an ad like this, right?
Yes, but animation is always all about artistry. AI can do some things well, but not everything well. There’s a lot more work involved than most people realize when it comes to hand-drawing characters, animating them, and all the details that go into production. It’s more than just saying a series of words and pressing a button. I hope people see it. We do a lot of tweaks and a lot of very specific things to make the animation look exactly like traditional animation. I have a 20-year-old daughter who is in school for 3D animation. She is my harshest critic. Human creativity is at the core of what we do. Like this Coca-Cola ad or this will.i.am article [another Secret Level project].
You argue that AI is fundamentally a tool – just a device like any other technology.
It’s just using technology to support human creativity and collaboration. We work with a global network of artists to put together these campaigns. These campaigns are very time consuming. AI just gives us the opportunity to do it much faster. Traditional animation would take months to create something like this. This took less than a month. Using AI increases efficiency. It allows you to iterate faster and run faster. We can move at the speed of culture.
Critics will say that speed isn’t really speed, it’s just taking advantage of what others have done and not hiring them.
The world is not slowing down. If you need a last-minute campaign, there is no way to run large projects at scale without AI. It simply won’t happen. Hollywood moves very slowly, but brands move very quickly. It’s interesting to see the difference because we play on both sides of the field. But efficiency at scale is becoming the norm in both worlds.
Let’s talk about the work element, since it’s a big part of the criticism of AI Studio’s output. Do you feel like there’s less work for human artists?
Well, take a look [Latvian animated Oscar winner] flow. They produced an Academy Award-winning quality film without the huge number of people required to produce an animated film. A small but mighty team. Let’s see more. [Note: Flow was made with a high-end tool called Blender, which uses a lot of tech but is not Generative AI.] As businesses move forward, this is a big part of why we think AI is a tool that will greatly empower rather than kill jobs. I look at it in terms of the visual effects of the time. There were model makers and painters, but the advent of computers may have diminished their jobs, but created a whole new market that employed far more people than traditional models.
That’s true, but that’s because the technology tools required large teams to use. The point of Generative AI is that the technology does most of the work on its own.
There are many people who work with AI. I gave a Ted Talk about this “AI divide”. There are two aspects. “I’m scared, I don’t know what my job will be like in the future.” And then there’s the other side, the “leaning” side. I speak at many conferences. In my opinion, the best people to use AI are those who work as artists. If you can do that, it’s the ultimate superpower. Now you can do what you need to do faster. That’s my view. If you lean in and embrace this, you’ll be able to do 10 times more than you could before. At the scale we want to do it, we’ll need 10 more people. And now it could be you and another person. The team will be smaller, but it could lead to a renaissance of creativity. You’ll be able to move much faster and do more with the same resources.
It’s also being discussed at a corporate level, right? In this new era of “efficiency,” brands and Hollywood productions aren’t going to cut their budgets, right? They stayed on budget and now intend to produce more. do you believe that?
The more you can do with less, the more you can do. We tell our clients this is not about cutting back on spending. It’s about using your budget more efficiently. This movie allows you to create a 90 second version [in addition to the 60-second spot] and customized version. We couldn’t do that without the efficiencies of AI.
What do you think has changed the most in the past year, other than technology?
I don’t think consumers had much experience with that last year. We often heard about it on TV and radio, but people had never used it or seen it. Now that’s the case.
And I believe many of them like what they see.
The reason last year’s spot test went so well is because the average consumer doesn’t really care. In our new ad, we travel around the world and see animals from different parts of the world. We put happiness on our faces, we put smiles on our faces. Why do you get angry about something like that?
