AI ads can look weird. Brands like Coca-Cola are making them anyway.

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Three animated holiday ads from Coca-Cola had the advertising community up in arms last week. Their offense? They were generated by artificial intelligence—and look like it.

Marketing professionals and consumers alike mocked logos that they describe as badly rendered, shiny faces and distorted proportions released by the same advertiser behind humanity-affirming campaigns like “Hilltop," in which young people sang, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke." “‘Always the real thing’ OH the IRONY," a YouTube commenter remarked on one of Coke’s videos. The fracas shines a light on a new creative tension running through Madison Avenue, parallel to concerns over how AI will change the way ad agencies get paid. Many creatives who dream up and make advertising remain loyal to the idea that commercials should be shaped by human artistry and, at the high end, look as good as Hollywood movies.

The clients they work for are growing more interested in using ads to show investors they are on top of new technologies, however, no matter how uncanny they might look to consumers, advertising executives say. “They want to signal to the Street that they are trying to get cheaper and faster with their creative services," said Mark Himmelsbach, founding partner of marketing services firm RYA. Very few signals are as bright as holiday ads that run relentlessly during the final weeks of the year, he said.

Coke said it is using AI not as a blunt cost-cutting instrument but as a tool to personalize ads without having to animate multiple features, among other uses. One of the new ads features a truck on a highway where a sign welcomes visitors. With the use of AI, Coke is targeting consumers in 12 U.S.