Coke Goes AI

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/coca-cola-doubles-down-ai-new-holiday-campaign/804303/

Coke is rolling out its holiday advertising and released a new ad that was completely AI-generated. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, but the fact that they are continuing down this path is really disheartening for me.

Sure, you can get a fully-built commercial out of AI tools. (Or, if you're more cynical, like me, you just call them "Giant Plagiarism Machines"). But like Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park,

So now we are fully moving into the phase of marketing where we simply don't hire people to produce our materials. I guess nothing screams "Happy Holidays" like "We're eliminating your position!"

Coke is far from the only company doing this, but the fact that one of the richest and most successful companies in the world can treat the people who had been working for them, it sends a message to every other company, "Fire your workers and do it with AI, or else you'll go out of business."

If Coke is so casual about replacing their marketing materials with AI, imagine how little they care about other workers, or about their customers. Seeing a completely AI-produced commercial tells me "You suckers will buy this, so we don't need to do anything creative or genuine. Just let AI do it"

I'm not fooling myself, I support lots of companies with my consumer dollar that either have, or definitely will do the exact same thing, but the fact that they're being so upfront about it shows how little our society cares about the ethics of these kinds of choices. I hope that this trend ends sooner rather than too-later.