Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
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Time for a yearly reminder that Coca-Cola sales are about to plummet in Sweden.
Every year Coca-Cola sales drop by about 50% in Sweden over christmas as Swedes buy Julmust instead.
I have already stocked up with 12 glorious bottles of Zeunerts Julmust giving me 6 liters, I live alone so this is plenty.
But won't someone think of all the extra bonus monies they can pay themselves as a result of avoiding paying human salaries? (Ironically, not even in this one bc the AI was so horrible that it required extensive clean up)
This is probably the least surprising thing ever.
CocaCola is like the symbol of capitalism. Everything they produce is corporate slop. GenAI is a perfect fit -- soulless, artless, hastily slapped together bright pictures that ultimately don't matter and carry no value. The world is not better with CocaCola ads, and it would be no worse without them. They're just there, to be lost in time, forgotten. Like tears in the rain.
I'm going insane looking at comments praising the 1995 TV spot, going on about how it makes them teary-eyed and such, and how the AI remake is a travesty. That shit already looked like if you put a Norman Rockwell artbook in the blender, drank the mixture and subsequently got sick on the Vegas Strip.
No shot is over two seconds, because AI video can’t keep it together longer than that. Animals and snowmen visibly warp their proportions even over that short time. The trucks’ wheels don’t actually move. You’ll see more wrong with the ad the more you look.
Not to mention the weird AI lighting that makes everything look fake and unnatural even in the ad's dreamlike context, and also that it's the most generic and uninspired shit imaginable.
I mean it's basic and boring but, considering the production cost was probably (a lot?) less than $1,000, compared to the $5,000+ it would've cost if filmed/animated traditionally, that seems like a win. And the average viewer isn't even gonna notice. In fact, they're getting plenty of free publicity for using AI to make it thanks to articles like these
In fact, they’re getting plenty of free publicity for using AI to make it thanks to articles like these
good thing there’s no such thing as bad publicity, otherwise this shit would be fucking embarrassing
I don't know the actual budget, but I think it probably cost much more than 1kUSD, though probably still less than real human work would cost.
It's important to note that no shit could last more than a second or two because after that the generated video starts to much more noticably have errors. So at minimum you still need editors (plus the music needed to be composited, etc). Also, as the article notes, all the logos needed to be added in post as well because GenAI cannot reliably do text or logos. With that in mind, I'd guess there was probably a significant amount of "cleaning up" that had to be done in post as well.
With all that said and done, I'm sure the commercial was not exactly dirt cheap, but it WAS probably still cheaper than having dignity and paying humans.
What's actually kind of wild, though, is a lot of these shots just look like bland stock imagery. And since they couldn't have any cohesion between shots because of GenAI's own limitations, the majority of these shots could have been replaced with stock footage and they probably would have only needed to CGI a few different shots...
What if I told you that the goal was not to make a good product, but to increase shareholder valuation?
In that case, all the "problems" disappear in light of chasing after the singular goal.
my my, those boots sure must be tasty
I've been boycotting cocacola for years now. Not sure what you're on about
you do not, under any circumstances, have to "give it to them"
there is no requirement to carry water for this awful shit
do not surprisedpikachu when someone calls out your weird posts
Are you quoting someone else?
Y'all get so upset about genAI and it's weird
jesus fucking christ do you even understand where you're posting? how are you this goddamn oblivious?
how are you this fucking mid?
This is crappy and weird but it could have been worse: unlike the Toy's Are U's advert they wisely decided not to include any human. Which in turn makes the caravan of trucks look eerie and sinister. You can't win them all.
there are apparently two other prospective ads that do include AI renditions of human actors and they're as bad.
The article mentions Toys'R'Us, was it also written by AI or did I slip into a universe where they didn't go out of business?
Toys r us is still alive in Canada
Still alive, but our local one is shutting down right after Christmas so I don't think it's going great for them
they'll have to comfort themselves with a Coke(tm), apparently it's a Surreal Thing
I believe it's a blockbuster situation
Got it. Thanks!
I conceptually don't like that.