Is AI Ruining the Joy of Christmas Adverts
By Rachel Renton
With Christmas coming next month, major brands are whipping up their newest adverts, trying to top their last one.
Christmas adverts have been known for their creativity and soul, some of them tugging at the viewer’s heart. however, with the use of AI, it really dims the Christmas spirit.
For the past two years, Coca Cola have used AI to create their Christmas advertisements rather than having human creativity. The 2025 adverts were not well received by the public despite the advancements of AI from the first one, with many pointing out the clear inconsistencies which would not have happened if Coca Cola decided to use animators. In one of the videos, the truck changes its shape and has a varying number of wheels.
Coca-Cola have made Christmas adverts for the people like many other companies
Pratik Thakar, global VP and head of generative AI at Coca-Cola, responded to the backlash.
When he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, he said:
“The haters on the Internet are the loudest. A lot of the people complaining last year were from the creative industry who were just afraid for their jobs, afraid for what it did. But I think the spot tested really well and average people really enjoyed it.
“The genie is out of the bottle, and you’re not going to put it back in.”
“The haters on the Internet are the loudest. A lot of the people complaining last year were from the creative industry who were just afraid for their jobs, afraid for what it did. But I think the spot tested really well and the average person enjoyed it.
“The genie is out of the bottle, and you’re not going to put it back in.”
In a behind-the-scenes video posted by Coca Cola, they said that the company had five AI specialists working on the ad which took them 30 days. The specialists refined 70,000 video clips using applications such as Luma AI, Sora (a model from OpenAI) as well as Google’s Veo 3.
An AI innovation lab named Silverside AI also helped Coca Cola produce one of the advertisements.
The famous drinks company has been trialling the use of AI to create adverts
Coca Cola claims to have had around the same amount of people on the production of the advertisement as before with their non-AI ads, but with AI specialists rather than animators.
While it may benefit the company financially to not spend so much on sets, animators or actors, it threatens the creative industry. The whole reason many people love Christmas adverts is because they evoke human emotion, from detailed animation to real actors conveying important messages about love and family during the holidays.
AI cannot create a feeling that those adverts do.