Thursday, November 28

Future of Television Briefing: A Q&A with Coca-Cola’s generative AI head about that vacation advertisement

This Future of television Briefing covers the most recent in streaming and television for Digiday+ members and is dispersed over e-mail every Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →

Today’s Future of television Briefing includes an interview with Coca-Cola’s Pratik Thakar about the brand name’s AI-generated vacation advertisement that has actually been getting a great deal of attention, for much better and even worse.

Trigger the sensation

This year’s pattern of brand names including generative AI innovation into advertisements and getting panned for doing so continues. It was Toys ‘R’ United States. Google. And now it’s Coca-Cola’s turn.

Recently the drink leviathan debuted a vacation project that took a traditional 1995 project and upgraded it by utilizing generative AI tools to develop the advertisements. Happy as the advertisements are, they have actually gotten lots of jeers– which Coca-Cola might have anticipated however likewise which did not welcome the brand name’s previous AI-generated advertisements. All of which has actually led me to questioning 2 things:

  1. Why did Coca-Cola feel this advertisement required to be AI-generated (beyond glossy brand-new toy syndrome)?
  2. Just how much of this advertisement was really AI-generated? All of it?

I put those concerns to Pratik Thakar, international head of generative AI at The Coca-Cola Company, in the interview listed below.

Before we get to that, a disclaimer: My method to covering the crossway of generative AI and material production is that gen AI is a tool. And like any tool– be it a pencil or a weapon– it can be handy or upsetting, which depends upon how it is utilized. My goal for this interview was, once again, to comprehend why Coca-Cola felt a requirement to utilize generative AI to develop the advertisements and what function(s) generative AI tools and people played in the advertisements’ production.

This interview has actually been modified for length and clearness.

Why did this advertisement requirement to be produced utilizing generative AI tools?

We were taking a look at various alternatives for Christmas previously this year, and after that we zeroed into our renowned “Holidays are Coming” movie. It required some sort of an upgrade due to the fact that we wished to exceed Great Britain, where we utilized [the ad] rather a lot, frequently in the U.K.

Now, generative AI does not do justice when we wish to reveal something extremely sensible. When we desire to reveal something hyper-realistic and fantastical, gen AI is the ideal tool or innovation. And this as simply a concept itself, as a principle, it’s a fantastical concept. At Coke, we do extremely practical work and really human work, and we do some magic work. In this case, it was heavy on the magic side and bringing that genuine feelings of the human. Therefore we believed much better we utilize this innovation for this particular movie and principle and develop numerous variations since gen AI offers us that creativity superpower.

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