Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and poking around MediaPost, when I came across Danielle Oster’s piece about a new Coca-Cola spot that has lots of people harrumphing.

Earlier this week, Coca-Cola kicked off its annual holiday advertising blitz — which has since generated buzz over the brand’s use of AI.

At the center of the campaign is a 30-second hero TV spot called “The Holiday Magic is Coming,” recreating a classic spot from 1995 while incorporating the use of AI technology in the making of the ad. Small text appears for a few seconds near the beginning, informing audiences that it was “Created with Real Magic AI” — but that announcement is s easy to miss.

For some viewers, the approach didn’t go down easy, with USA Today reporting the comments on the brand’s YouTube post of the video were largely negative.

What the heck, Doc. Does A.I. actually stand for Absolutely Idiotic?

– Xmas Xcess

Dear XX,

First things first: Here’s the Coke spot those people are snorting at.

As for that “small text” disclosure, here’s how it looks on-screen.

One YouTube commenter wrote, “Nothing like celebrating the spirit of Christmas with the most soulless commercial possible.” The MediaPost piece says, “Coca-Cola has since restricted the page, hiding comments,” but you can see 2283 comments here, so go figure.

Beyond snarky Santa claws, the inevitable culture wars have also flared up, as Salon’s Ashlie D. Stevens has detailed.

Many creators and customers were quick to criticize the campaign as being emblematic of a worrying trend of replacing human artistry with machine-generated substitutes. For instance, Alex Hirsch, the creator of the beloved Disney series “Gravity Falls,” joked online that Coca-Cola’s signature red color scheme was now “made from the blood of out-of-work artists,” while other social media commentators described the advertisement as “disastrous” and “dystopian.”

“Coca-Cola just put out an ad and ruined Christmas,” Dylan Pearce, a TikTok user, said of the commercial. “To put out slop like this just ruins the Christmas spirit.”

Then again, not everyone is all Grinched out by the ad, according to Oster’s piece: “System1 analyzed the performance of the full 80-second ad with audiences using its ‘Test Your Ad’ platform, and awarded it an ‘exceptional’ score of 5.9 (out of 6) in its star rating system. ‘Excited’ and ‘uplifted’ were the most common emotional responses reported.”

(None of the survey respondents were told the ad was A.I. generated, for those of you keeping score at home.)

The Doc’s diagnosis: This contretemps will go flat faster than the Coke you leave out for Santa on Christmas eve. Happy holidays one and all.