New Coca-Cola
With its recently signed partnership with OpenAI, The Coca-Cola Company is diving headfirst into the AI industry.
In the press release announcing the deal, the value of the partnership between Coca-Cola, OpenAI, and the Bain consulting firm was not given. However, given that the AI firm just won a multibillion-dollar contract with Microsoft, it’s safe to assume that the partnership is quite profitable. This is especially true given Coke’s long and successful history in advertising, which the press release says could be a target for AI technology.
Coca-Cola CEO James Quincy said in a statement that the company is “excited to unleash the next generation of creativity offered by this rapidly emerging technology,” referring to technologies like DALL-E and ChatGPT.
In addition to improving business operations and capabilities, “we see opportunities to enhance our marketing through cutting-edge AI,” Quincy said.
Marketability
Coke is the first company to join Bain and OpenAI in their new partnership, and while the details of the deal have not been revealed just yet, the press release suggests implementations in marketing, sales, and human resources that, to be honest, sound pretty dystopian.
Coke’s chief financial officer and president, John Murphy, told a British food news website, The Grocer, that the deal’s marketing potential was a major selling point.
“We have a couple of really interesting cases with the marketing team to enhance the work that we’re already doing with our new marketing model,” Murphy said. “and to be able to marry the ability to deliver creative content at speed and to do it with exponential efficiency.”
Quite Some Delay
Despite the new partnership, this is not Coca-first Cola’s foray into the realm of artificial intelligence.
As part of its AI-centered business strategy, the company said in 2017 that it would start using “AI-powered” vending machines. These machines would use algorithms to figure out the most popular flavors and other key metrics.
How well AI-generated marketing fares, and whether it helps normalize the uncanny feeling that much AI art gives viewers, remains to be seen.
