From an evolutionary perspective, the discomfort we feel when confronted with artificial humans — in ads, video games, or even robotics — stems from our evolved innate capacity to detect social and biological anomalies from just scraps of information. This phenomenon, often referred to as the ‘uncanny valley,’ describes the sense of unease we experience when something looks almost human — but not quite.
This response likely evolved as a survival mechanism. Early humans who could quickly identify and avoid individuals who appeared sick, injured, or otherwise not-quite-right may have had a better chance of avoiding disease or danger. When we see something that mimics humanity but exhibits subtle deviations — unnatural expressions, slightly incorrect proportions, too many/few fingers or stilted movement — it triggers this ancient alarm system. The AI-generated remake of the Coke ‘Holidays Are Coming’ ad seems to have stumbled directly into this uncanny valley. Its characters are close enough to human to feel familiar, yet far enough to feel alien. They fail to elicit the empathy and trust that real human faces can convey, leaving us with an unsettling aftertaste.
It has sparked mixed reactions across the industry and beyond, for sure. On one hand, it’s a technical marvel — a demonstration of just how far AI has come in recreating complex visuals. We all had a good laugh at that pizza delivery horror show that went round just a year or so ago. There was a certain aesthetic about those early AI video experiments that was far enough from representing any kind of reality that made them amusing. But as the machine learns and improves, it is now leaving many viewers and commentators unsettled, even if they are not exactly sure why. While most of the spot is innocuous enough, like a bog-standard bit of animation upgrade on the perennial ‘Trucks and snow’ scene of old that would pass unremarked up — if we are honest, it’s the introduction of reimagined ‘human’ characters (rendered entirely by the generative AI) that feel slightly macabre, with just enough human likeness to evoke discomfort rather than connection.
As a cultural artefact, it’s worth a bit of picking apart
This is not just a remade ad, it’s a peculiar paradox. A vision of the future masquerading as a ghost of the past. On the surface, it’s an impressive feat — AI conjuring a slick, digital facsimile of nostalgia. But look a wee bit closer, and the ad reveals something much darker, in particular the snippets of hollow, almost-human figures, glowing with an artificial warmth that chills rather than comforts.
The characters do not smile, they smirk with algorithmic precision, their faces caught in a liminal state where humanity falters. They compete with us. Their eyes are too knowing, yet utterly dead, as if they’re mimicking a memory of empathy rather than feeling it. Their movements are seamless but too smooth, like mutant six-fingered marionettes liberated from strings but not from control. They are ‘not quite human’, and it shows in the way they utterly fail to inhabit the world they were built to sell us.
These figures stand at the edge of recognition, staring back at us from the uncanny valley. They are not people, but approximations of people, and their spookiness lies in their implied intent. They are not here to connect but to seduce, to manipulate, to remind us that even the most sacred emotional touchpoints of advertising —nostalgia, joy, the warmth of the holidays — are now commodities that can be hijacked and sold back to us by machines.
In the original ad, there was a faux-authenticity that resonated, we wanted to believe it — a world of frosty December nights and twinkling lights, delivered to us by real children, real human faces and tangible imperfections. In the AI remake, this warmth has been stripped away, replaced by something colder, more clinical. The characters are too perfect, their faces smooth and unblemished, but this perfection betrays them. It isn’t beauty, it’s a mask.
They seem aware, somehow, of their inauthenticity, their fixed smiles daring us to question what they really are. They haunt the ad like ghosts of a future that forgot what it meant to feel.
They are simulacra, in the Baudrillardian sense: not copies of something real, but copies of copies, floating in a hyperreal void where the original — actual human connection — has been erased.
This is a new kind of nostalgia, one that doesn’t long for the past, but cannibalises it
The AI figures in the ad aren’t bringing back the warmth of the ’90s, they’re reanimating it, like a corpse dressed in holiday lights. The Coca-Cola truck still glows, the music still plays, but the human touch has been replaced by something sterile and unfeeling. It’s festive necromancy, and we’re the unwitting audience. The uncanny Coke valley triggers our most primal instincts, warning us of something that looks human but isn’t — like a predator in disguise, a diseased stranger, or a doll that shouldn’t move but does. But this remake doesn’t just unsettle on a biological level; it disturbs on a cultural and existential one.
Baudrillard argued that in a world of simulacra, representations no longer reflect reality — they replace it. The generative AI remake doesn’t remind us of the original ‘Holidays Are Coming’, it erases it, supplants it, insists that this sterile simulation is just as good, if not better. These AI humans don’t need to be real because the simulation doesn’t care about authenticity — they aren’t poor representations of real people, they are simulations that exist solely within their own digital world.
And yet, the phantasmagoria of these figures lingers, a quiet menace that whispers, ‘This is what you’ve chosen.’ Increasingly we inhabit a world that celebrates the replacement of human creativity with efficiency, of genuine emotion with facsimiles. The unsettling perfection of these AI-generated characters isn’t just a glitch — it’s a warning. They are what happens when we trade the warmth of the real for the chill of the simulated.
The most frightening thing about the ad isn’t the figures themselves, but what they represent…
… a world where even the ghosts of nostalgia are mechanised, optimised, and stripped of their soul. These almost-humans aren’t just creepy — they’re prophets of a future where the holidays, and everything else we hold dear, are swallowed by the machine.
The uncanny valley isn’t just a technical problem to be solved; it’s a reminder that humans respond to humanity, not its simulations. Nostalgia, in particular, is a dangerous playground for generative AI. When we attempt to recreate the past using tools that inherently lack emotional depth, we risk undermining the very connection we’re trying to evoke.
Once, ‘Holidays Are Coming’ felt like an invitation — a schmaltzy promise of warmth, joy, and togetherness glowing in the depths of winter. It was a beacon of optimism, a reminder that even in the coldest nights, there was light and laughter to be shared. Yes, it was bullshit but it was a benign bullshit that we were happy to go with. We knew it was BS but Coke knew that we knew and it was a game we could all play.
But now, in this facsimile, those same words feel more like a threat. Holidays ARE coming. And they are coming for YOU. What’s coming is the future they represent — a future where connection is synthetic, nostalgia is cannibalised, and even the rituals of joy are drained of their soul. The lights of the Coca-Cola truck still glow, but they cast shadows that linger long after the ad fades — a foreboding wrapped in tinsel, a cold reminder that the machine is coming for everything, even our most cherished illusions. If advertising is to remain effective in a world of increasing, and inevitable, AI sophistication, it must remember the power of great storytelling in its ability to move people by reflecting not just what we see, but what we feel.
In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard argued that in a world increasingly dominated by simulacra — copies without originals — representations lose their connection to reality and create their own hyperreality. This hyperreal quality makes the ad feel both hollow and disorienting. It’s not just that the characters look a little strange; it’s that they symbolise a broader cultural shift where authenticity is replaced by seamless but lifeless simulations. The unease sparked by this generative AI ad is a collision of two forces. Our evolutionary instincts and the logic of hyperreality. On one level, our brains flag the AI-generated humans as untrustworthy, a threat to our deeply ingrained social filters. On another, Baudrillard’s insights remind us that the simulacra aren’t even trying to be real — they’re an entirely new form of representation that breaks our traditional ways of making sense of images and symbols.
Featured image: Coca Cola / YouTube
