Coca-Cola's AI-generated Christmas ad draws backlash over 'soulless' imagery

Coca-Cola released a set of AI-generated Christmas adverts remaking its well-known 1995 “Holidays Are Coming” commercial — the illuminated Coca-Cola trucks driving through a snowy town — using three AI production studios (Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card) and generative video tools including Runway, Luma and Kling. The ads were widely mocked online rather than warmly received.

Viewers and animation professionals pointed to visible artefacts characteristic of the technology at the time: truck wheels that did not appear to turn correctly, distorted proportions, incoherent background detail, and a near-total absence of clear human faces, including Santa’s, in a campaign built around a festive crowd scene. Animator and Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch was among the critics, joking that Coca-Cola’s red was “the blood of out-of-work artists” — a line that captured the reaction from creative professionals, for whom the ad’s use of generative tools in place of animators or film crews was itself the objection, independent of the visual flaws.

The episode became a widely cited example of the gap between generative video’s technical promise and its consumer-facing reception at the end of 2024, and of the reputational risk a household brand took on by publicly adopting the technology in a nostalgic, high-visibility campaign. Coca-Cola repeated the approach in its 2025 holiday advertising and drew renewed criticism.