Coca-Cola’s AI Holiday Ad Is Everywhere. It’s a Sign of a Much Bigger Problem

The holiday season may just be beginning with Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but hating on AI is always in season. Enter a new holiday-themed ad from Coca-Cola that’s provoking blowback for its use of generative AI to bring its scenes to life — or at least, that’s what it attempted to do.

The commercial is pretty basic. A Coca-Cola truck drives through a wintry landscape and into a snowy town, and forest animals awaken to follow the truck and its soda bottle contents to a lit Christmas tree in a town…