Mariah Carey's TikTok post about the “thaw,” homes decorated with Christmas lights, and the iconic Coca-Cola red trucks are back on TV screens.

Coca-Cola's “Holidays Are Coming” commercial first appeared on TV screens in 1995, showing a fleet of illuminated red trucks; in 2020, the campaign was replaced by “We Need More Santas,” but thanks to AI Holidays Are Coming” was revived in 2024 thanks to AI.

Coca-Cola worked with three AI studios: Coca-Cola worked with three AI studios, Secret Level, Silverside AI, and Wild Card, to create three different versions of the festive ad. Each used Coca-Cola brand assets and followed the same concept. They used a variety of AI models, including the runway I recently used to send myself on an AI adventure.

They received the usual criticism on YouTube from those concerned about generative AI replacing filmmakers; according to Marketing Interactive, a survey by media intelligence firm Truescope found that most people not concerned about the use of AI in the commercial, with 83% expressing a “neutral” sentiment.

AI video has come a long way in a year, reaching from barely recognizable 2-second clips of people to near-perfect realism. Some models, especially for video-to-video, have first clips closer to 20 seconds, and some tools now allow brands to be embedded.

However, no two AI video models are the same, so to get the best overall results, one must be able to leverage a variety of models. Such is the case with Coca-Cola's AI commercial, which even included human work.

According to Silverside, it took two months to produce the commercial, which would have taken a year using conventional CGI and filming techniques.

They created 10,000 frames and 5,000 video segments using primarily AI tools, including Runway, Kling, and Luma Labs Dream Machine. They also used proprietary technology to seamlessly integrate Coca-Cola branding.

The real power of using AI to create projects lies in how quickly it allows for change: according to Silverside, “It can be quickly customized for different regions in real time, combining AI and human creativity, It shows that storytelling can be elevated to new heights.”

Secret Level founder Jason Zada said that Kling has been most helpful in making human movement more realistic. He told Ad Age magazine: “When a new model comes out and you run some of your old shots through it, suddenly everything changes.

Customization is the main point here; AI video is changing and improving faster than almost any other area of generative AI technology. These projects started 3 months ago and much has improved since then.

We have seen the upgrade of Runway, the launch of Hailuo MiniMax, the open source Mochi with its impressive customization, OpenAI's Sora, Google DeepMind's Veo, and Meta's Movie We're still waiting for Gen.