Coca-Cola threw 100 staff members and a mountain of cash at remaking their beloved 1995 "Holidays Are Coming" campaign—with AI doing the heavy lifting this time. The result? A visual nightmare that has the internet howling with laughter.
The beverage giant partnered with San Francisco studios Secret Level and Silverside AI to produce a staggering 70,000 AI-generated video clips. Advanced generative AI tools handled everything from camera angles to physics and character consistency. Multiple versions were created for different markets, including a U.S.-exclusive edition. The scale was massive, the ambition clear.
What they delivered was something else entirely.
The AI-reimagined Christmas trucks now have wheels that actually rotate—progress, apparently. But that's where the improvements end. Human faces are largely missing from scenes, replaced by uncanny depictions of animals that look like they crawled out of a fever dream. The polar bears and sloths are particularly unsettling. Santa's close-up reveal showed distorted, hyperrealistic features that would make children run screaming.
The AI trucks may roll properly now, but the nightmarish animals and horror-movie Santa make you miss the old static wheels.
This marks the initial year Coca-Cola has faced widespread mockery for their AI holiday ads. Last year's version featured stiff, unnatural human faces that critics savaged. They learned nothing.
The campaign retained the classic "Holidays Are Coming" slogan alongside their "Real Magic" branding, focusing on festive spirit and nostalgia. The irony is thick—there's nothing magical about watching AI butcher beloved imagery.
Coca-Cola positioned itself among the primary major brands using AI for holiday advertising, reflecting broader industry trends. Other companies are experimenting with AI-generated content, though comparisons to Google's more successful AI ad make Coke's effort look even worse. Despite the one month production timeline, the rushed execution shows in every frame.
The company emphasized pushing cinematic storytelling boundaries and showcasing technological innovation. Mission accomplished, if the goal was demonstrating how not to use AI creatively. The debacle perfectly illustrates generative AI's struggle with quality consistency, as the technology often remixes patterns from training data rather than producing truly original content.
Social media erupted with disappointment and ridicule. Critics noted the poor visual quality and unnatural elements that plague AI-generated content. The massive resource investment—100 staff members, tens of thousands of clips, collaborations with multiple studios—produced a campaign that feels soulless and creepy.
Sometimes throwing money and technology at nostalgia just creates expensive garbage.