Coke executive: New AI holiday ad's "craftsmanship is so much better."

For a few weeks last November, no villain loomed larger over Madison Avenue and social media that polices it than Coca-Cola .

The company’s “Holidays Are Coming” spot, an homage to a classic 1995 ad , featured the original’s rhythmic anthem as trucks drove through various snowy landscapes. Only now the ad was filled with AI generated objects, animals and people — a fact that did not go over well with creatives and many others on the Internet who nonetheless helped the ad rack up billions of impressions. “Coca-Cola is red because it’s made from the blood of out-of-work artists,” Hollywood writer decried Alex Hirsch, one of many such negative comments noting both the spot’s labor ethics and its aesthetics.

For a few weeks last November, no villain loomed larger over Madison Avenue