Copyright Digital Trends
Coca-Cola has just released its latest Christmas ad (above) and just like last year’s effort, it’s deployed a slew of generative-AI tools to create it. A nod to Coca-Cola’s famous 1995 Christmas ad that most definitely did not use AI, both the 2024 and 2025 commercials depict a convoy of Coca-Cola trucks setting out to deliver the famous fizzy beverage to a snow-covered town bedecked with Christmas lights. As the latest commercial is a close copy of last year’s ad, let’s take a look at just how far AI-generated video has progressed in the last 12 months. But first, take a quick look at the video below to remind yourself of last year’s effort: Fizz in the bottle At the very start, Coca-Cola’s 2025 ad shows the top being pulled off a Coke bottle, with the bubbles and carbon dioxide clear to see. That’s an impressive amount of detail right there. Last year’s ad merely showed a lid coming off the bottle as the AI at that point was incapable of displaying those kinds of subtle occurrences with any kind of realism. Smoother, more realistic camera tracking Last year’s Coke ad included plenty of tracking shots, but they’re jerky and have a fake feel to them. This time around, the technology has advanced to a level where it can generate much smoother, and much more realistic-looking tracking footage. Properly rotating truck wheels Coke’s 2024 ad included some shots in which the trucks’ wheels failed to rotate, making it look as if the vehicle was sliding along the road. When you notice it, you can’t not notice it, and it becomes rather jarring to look at. The latest ad, however, nails the complexity of creating realistically turning wheels using AI. More natural lighting There’s something off about the lighting in last year’s Coke ad, whereas the latest one achieves natural lighting effects pretty much throughout. It creates a much more pleasing quality that captures more of the traditional holiday warmth and cinematic quality associated with Coke’s Christmas ads. Improved animation and more details for animals While AI is getting much better at bringing natural movement to human faces — generative text-to-video tools like Google’s Veo 3 and OpenAI’s Sora 2 are producing increasingly impressive results in this area — Coke decided to stick with animals in its festive ad, with the less complex facial movements and expressions easier for AI to handle. A marked improvement in the latest ad is the details in the faces of the animals that appear. The creatures in Coke’s 2024 Christmas ad look flat and move awkwardly, while the latest commercial sees big improvements across the board. AI can have trouble with intricate movements, but watch how well it shows the dogs wagging their tails! Realistic rendering of water Coke’s 2024 Christmas commercial didn’t dare attempt to include water movement as the AI just couldn’t reliably achieve such an effect. Fast forward a year and we have a shot of seals swimming under water before the camera emerges with the aquatic creatures to watch the Coke trucks crossing a bridge. From the movement of the water — both below and above the surface — to the complex reflections on the surface, it’s all very impressive. Layered scenes Last year’s ad featured plenty of animals, but they were usually shown in close-up and lacked any context, with the AI apparently unable to generate anything more pleasing. This time, we see more complex, layered scenes, with more happening in the frame. So we have birds flying high over the Coke trucks, rabbits running toward a sign featuring Santa, and seals and penguins watching the trucks pass by. The effect is visually far more pleasing, and adds a feeling of greater creativity to the overall production. More detail in the scenes Across the board, the 2025 commercial shows more detail and appears less flat than in last year’s ad, with the more advanced AI tools enabling richer, textured environments for a more cinematic winter landscape. It’s a major improvement on the 2024 ad, which was ridiculed for its underwhelming visuals. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the AI-generated ad, Coca-Cola’s global VP and head of generative AI Pratik Thakar said he believed that the craftsmanship in the latest commercial is “10 times better” than last year’s effort, adding that as far as generative AI and video creation is concerned, “The genie is out of the bottle and you’re not going to put it back in.” That will be hard to hear for creatives in the film industry, but it certainly seems to be the direction of travel, with shorter production times and lower costs suggesting that jobs in traditional TV and movie production are now on the line, with some already apparently lost. Indeed, the beverage giant used a relatively small team to make its latest festive ad, with around 100 people involved across Coca-Cola, its advertising agency WPP, and the AI creative studios Silverside and Secret Level — and no film crew required. In the main production stage, a mere five AI specialists were deployed to prompt, create, and refine more than 70,000 video generations for the ad. And then there’s the added issue — and a highly contentious one at that — of artists failing to be properly compensated for the work they’ve created that’s been used to train the AI models that output footage. “There will be people who criticize — we cannot keep everyone 100% happy,” Thakar said. “But if the majority of consumers see it in a positive way, it’s worth going forward.”
