What the ad looks like

Instead of trying to make realistic people, Coke went all-in on animals: polar bears, a panda, a sloth, and a bunch of other critters. Styles jump around from semi-realistic to cartoony, and the movement can feel flat and odd, like 2D cut-outs nudged across the screen rather than properly animated characters. On the plus side, the iconic red trucks finally have wheels that actually turn this year. Progress, however small. 

Why the criticism

We’re in a world where AI video tools are getting scarily good, and that makes the bar higher. Compared with the slick deepfake-style clips we now see from leading models, Coca-Cola’s spot looks dated and uneven. It’s also arriving after Coke caught flak in 2024 for earlier AI holiday ads that featured uncanny faces and weird physics, so the scrutiny was always going to be intense. 

Who made it

Coca-Cola worked with AI studios Silverside and Secret Level, with around 100 people involved overall. Five AI specialists reportedly prompted and refined more than 70,000 AI video clips to assemble the final cut. That’s a lot of material for a single commercial and shows how manual AI production still is behind the scenes. 

Speed and cost

According to reporting referenced by The Verge, Coke’s chief marketing officer says AI made the campaign cheaper and much faster to produce. What once took about a year can now be turned around in roughly a month. That speed is clearly a big reason brands are experimenting so heavily with AI, even if the creative results are inconsistent. 

Here's the video. What do you think? 

https://youtu.be/Yy6fByUmPuE

Sora 2 launched the other day. It took me a minute to get access, but I’ve got invites. If you want in, drop a comment and I’ll DM you a code.

Thread rules:

1. If someone DMs you a code and it works, pay it forward—offer your own invites here.

2. Don’t post actual codes in the thread. Just say you have one and DM folks who ask.

3. If you run out of codes, reply to your comment so others know.

I've only got two, but willing to give them out to the first two that ask for them.

(NOTE: if you have an iphone, you may be able to get a code that way, but since I didn't have one, I had to manually find one online [i.e. repeating refresh a certain reddit thread until I got one that worked, lol). 

Anyway, I couldn't see an AI section on the forum ... not sure if that's intentional?

I just saw the new iteration of Synthesia ... and it's pretty amazing! They've just made a massive upgrade to an already impressive AI avatar based video creation thingy.

You give it a script with some emotion in there (emoticons work too) and it animates your super-lifelike looking avatar with many of the little micro-expressions and subtle movements humans make when we're talking and expressing ourselves with gestures.

If the script is happy, the avatar smiles and adopts a happy expression ... and it's not like it's just splicing video clips together. It's gen AI and every vid is different, apparently ... crazy!

This is next level stuff and I've been playing around with some video ads on Rumble (because Google got upset at the Clickbank product I was advertising ... don't want to give them my money anyway!) so can see this working really well over there.

Not sure if I can post a link here so if you search Youtube for "Expressive AI Avatars Launch Event | Synthesia" - that should take you there.

It's £23 a month with 10 minutes of exported video in that month so pretty affordable to get started with and perfect for making little 2 minute video ads or even just those 15-20 second intros you see on some Youtube video ads before it switches to the more generic voice/slideshow bit.

Let me know what you think ... it really blew me away. I think it's a game-changer and it's only going to get better.