French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI) [video]

It's a cute ad all but as a French kid I used to see similar things often, we have a good culture of animation. Is "they didn't use AI" really a criteria now?

I think that comment is in response to McDonalds recent AI-slop-ad.

Advertising that you didn't use AI is definitely a thing now. But this is more likely a jab at the recent McDonalds ad, which did use AI, and which the agency who made the ad vigorously defended the use of AI (hilariously, by bragging about how many hours it took to make that ad).

And Coca Cola

> vigorously defended the use of AI (hilariously, by bragging about how many hours it took to make that ad).

Likewise with the Coca Cola ad, the agency said in their defense that they had to sift through 70,000 video generations to assemble the few dozen shots in the final ad. And after all that sifting they still couldn't get the one element of continuity (the Coke truck) to look consistent from shot to shot, and had to manually composite over all of the Coke logos since the model kept mangling them.

I feel like there are subcultures that value "long hours and hard work" over "result".

If you can produce great things easily, then it is lazy. But if worked hours and hours including through Christmans, then it is great even if result is crap.

That’s hilarious. I had cursory familiarity with the McDonald’s situation but did not know thread agency aspect. I’d be very curious how many “hours” were spent minus the inference time.

> Is "they didn't use AI" really a criteria now?

Absolutely. Have you been living under a rock? /jk ;-)

I don't watch TV and use ad-blockers on my devices so I don't have a clue of what ads look like nowadays.

And given how people are praising this one (that looks exactly like the ones I was used to growing up) I can only guess that the situation must be awful.

The only mention of AI is the editorialized title in the HN submission, I don't see any mention at all in the ad or the video description. This ad does not appear to be a reaction to anything.

It's reactions to reactions. Low quality type of engagement, similar to why people complain about AI.

> that looks exactly like the ones I was used to growing up

Unless you’re so young you just finished growing up, I find that unlikely. Sure, this ad isn’t visually revolutionary by today’s standards (nor does it need to be; it’s an ad, it’s not being played in theatres before the next Disney movie), but it’s still competent and has a ton of detail which surpasses earlier Pixar pictures.