The Real Thing

 Coca-Cola, or as we have come to know it, "America's Favorite Liquid," is getting criticism for what consumers refer to as "soulless" holiday commercials to commemorate the Holiday Season. Wait a moment, strike that, nobody is silly enough to believe that Coca-Cola or its many subsidiaries need to shade anything more woke than rubbing our collective noses in Christmas. Because we love it so.

But back to that "soulless" issue. The concern is based primarily on the use of Artificial Intelligence to generate these self-referential red and green advertisements pointed directly at our limbic system, specifically that part that breeds nostalgia. But they didn't bother to hire animators or actors to do it. They just poured a two liter bottle of America's favorite beverage into the processor and let the bots do their work. The result, "Holidays are Coming" is filled with references to previous wintry ad campaigns for the soft drink that goes well with anything. All the time. Forever. 

You may not remember a time when Coca-Cola ran afoul of the world's sensitivities by promoting their elixir with polar bears. They've been doing that for more than one hundred years, but it wasn't until 1993 that they truly got behind these endangered carnivores and pushed. That's when the Coke behemoth unleashed "Northern Lights" on a parched public. State of the art computer graphics were employed to bring a sloth of polar bears together to have a Coke and a smile while they take in the Aurora Borealis. Each one of those commercials took twelve weeks to create. 

Fast forward to 2012 when the King of All Things Soda decreed that they would be helping support their nominal mascot by selling cans of Coke decorated with the animals they picked to represent them who were dying by the hundreds on ice floes in a diminishing arctic. They campaign raised two million dollars to save polar bears. I leave you to figure out the percentage of Coke's eleven billion dollars in profit that works out to be, but at least they were doing it in some manner of good faith. 

Which brings us back to the hastily manufactured images presented in this year's ad. All those good vibes created by making donations to the World Wildlife Fund start to fade into the Artificial Intelligence maelstrom. Consider this: Generating one thousand images using AI creates as much carbon dioxide as driving a gas-powered car four miles, and a study found that data centers may require the same amount of electricity needed to power a small nation by 2027. "Real Magic" is the tagline being bounced around at the end of Coca-Cola ads. What do the Coke Powers That Be have to say about it? "The Coca-Cola Company has celebrated a long history of capturing the magic of the holidays in content, film, events, and retail activations for decades around the globe. We are always exploring new ways to connect with consumers and experiment with different approaches."

In the interest of being completely transparent, I used to drink a lot of Coca-Cola. Kidney stones put the kibosh on that addiction. I wonder if AI could create that experience for me?