Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 417: Using Microsoft AI to Create Real Magic with Coca-Cola

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Did you see that Coca-Cola holiday AI commercial!? It's been all the buzz lately. There were more than a dozen humans that worked on the project. Think that's shocking? Wait until you hear the REAL story and a new way that Coca-Cola is partnering with Microsoft to create some real magic.Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan, Pratik and Marco questions on AI Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:1. AI and Coca Cola2. AI beyond Chatbots3. AI and Microsoft Azure Foundry4. AI Usage in Coca Cola CampaignsTimestamps:00:00 AI empowers creativity and consumer connection daily.05:57 Custom snow globes created using Microsoft technology.10:11 Discussing Coca-Cola's nostalgic Santa Claus depiction challenges.12:19 Reimagining Santa authentically with cutting-edge technology.15:13 Started Gen AI and OpenAI collaboration in 2022.18:30 Combining human creativity and AI technology.22:27 Trustworthy AI is crucial for responsible deployment.23:50 Generative AI offers unique consumer connections.Keywords:AI, generative AI, Copilot, productivity, consumers, everyday AI, artificial intelligence, Microsoft WorkLab, Azure AI, Microsoft Ignite conference, Pratik Thakar, Coca Cola Company, digital twin, Leonardo AI, chatbot, Outlook calendar, Marco Casalaina, Create Real Magic campaign, Microsoft, marketing, commercials, AI commercials, AI Foundry, programming model, trustworthy AI, ethical prompting strategy, technology, digital marketing, nostalgia, Coca Cola Santa.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info)

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live and Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. You can create something magical with AI.

I think a lot of times when we talk about artificial intelligence and generative AI, and now we're talking so much co-pilot, we think about saving time. We think about productivity. And don't get me wrong, generative AI does all of those things. But I think you can go more. We always talk about how can you connect more with your consumer. in an age where sometimes it seems like AI makes things impersonal. Well, we're going to be talking about that today and a lot more on Everyday AI. What's going on y'all? My name is Jordan

Wilson and I'm the host of Everyday AI and this is a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping us all not just learn about AI but how we can keep up and get ahead. And we do that by talking with some of the smartest people in the world and today is no difference. So if you're joining us on the podcast. Thank you, as always. Make sure to check out your show notes and go to your everyday AI.com to sign up for that free daily newsletter. Before we get started, have to give a quick shout out to our partners at Microsoft WorkLab. So why should you listen to the WorkLab podcast from Microsoft? Because it's the place to find actionable insights to guide your organization's AI transformation. Tune in to learn how to think more creatively about unlocking the full potential

of the technology. That's W-O-R-K-L-A-B. No Spaces available wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the show. If you're here to hear the daily news, that'll be in the newsletter as well. We are actually live at the Microsoft Ignite Conference here in Chicago. So our live stream audience sees that, and I'm joined by two very smart people, and I'm excited to talk about how we can create some magical experiences with AI. So please help me, Welcome, Prateek Tecure. He is the global VP of generative AI at the Coca-Cola company. Prateek, thank you for joining us.

Thank you. All right, and then we have Marco Casalena, the VP of Products for Azure AI at Microsoft. Marco, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. All right, we have a rare two-for-one treat here at Everyday AI. So I'm excited about this. And like I said, we are still live here

at the Ignite Conference in Chicago. But I'm excited to talk about creating magic. So we're going to be putting this in the newsletter. So don't worry, because you're going to hear a description of something that I think is really cool. I did it myself this morning. But, Patique, tell us a little bit about this Create Real Magic campaign from the Coca-Cola company. Sure, sure. So Create Real Magic.

We wanted to give an invitation to our consumers globally to bring Christmas experience and that feeling to their daily life or their. kind of a Christmas experience. Now how do we bring that and make it very distinctive right? First thing you know coca-cola created Santa the way we see Santa and we understand Santa in 1931 so we took our Santa, Sunblum Santa from our archive and we wanted that Santa to be conservative conversative so we knew that conversational AI is going to be big conversational AI is going to create unique experiences and we wanted to be first in that. So one side we want to stay ahead of the curve in this, the way we adopt technology in our marketing,

but the other side we wanted to root it into who we are and what's our heritage. And that's where the Santa comes in. And we knew that consumers, and when I was young, I always wanted to talk to Santa. Now when you go to a shopping mall or any any festivals, Christmas festival markets, you can go to Santa, you shake hand, you get a gift, but you don't have an opportunity to have a conversation. You can't ask questions and sit down. So what if we bring that experience and everyone will enjoy that and that's only Coke can do? So that was the starting point. And then we work with Microsoft team and many other partners to bring that to life.

We create a digital twin 3D avatar of Orsanta. Then we bring Microsoft tools to make him truly multilingual. So it transcends the boundary. It actually speaks your language from Japanese to Spanish to German to French to even Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, right? So very specific dialect. So 26 different language. He needs to speak in special Santa tone. And this time, first time we brought Santa from archive.

Otherwise, you have always seen Santa in a static mode. So we wanted to bring him in the right way. So that's where we work together and train the models. And that was a great experience working. with Microsoft team and everyone else. We work with Leonardo AI in Australia. They actually, so once you talk to Santa, and Santa will ask you about your Christmas memories.

And once you, in every conversation is unique. It's real-time conversation, like the way we are having conversation. So once you give memory, he will probe you, he will ask you more details, and then he will say, okay, I'm going to make a snow globe for you. The Snow Globe, which gets created based on your conversation and your Christmas memory, which you can actually take it and share it on your social media or send it to your loved ones. So that's the whole journey.

But then to bring this together, there was no real off-the-shelf tools were available. So we wanted to work with our partners. And that's where Microsoft opened up their R&D doors for us. And our team worked, our tech emerging technology team, our marketing technology team worked with Microsoft to make this happen. So and that's now you can, it's live. You can, you can try it out. Yeah.

And I did it this morning. It was delightful. I haven't talked to Santa obviously in like 30 some years. But I want to get back to that in a second critique, but Marco, I want to ask you, because like I started the show off, I think when people talk about AI, sometimes it gets a bad rap, right? People think of it as very impersonal. And I don't know, when I was talking to Santa this morning, I thought it was pretty personal, right? It gives you some emotions. But maybe could you talk about it a little bit from the Azure perspective and how, you know, all of this new technology that we're here. hearing about here at Ignite, it is for more than just saving time. Yeah, absolutely. You know, what's really interesting about what you guys did, and I also talked to Santa,

and it made me a snow globe here in Chicago of the magnificent mile and that kind of thing. And, you know, one of the things that this new technology enables, and that we're enabling now with the Azure AI Foundry is to think beyond the chatbot. Yeah, everybody thinks of AI as like, you type to it, it types to you, kind of chat GPT style. style and what you guys did is way beyond that. I mean, the fact is you could talk to this thing. I mean, you have it in 26 different languages. The underlying AI can speak even more than that.

We had it speaking Delugu this morning. We had speaking Hindi this morning. So this technology can speak in all these different languages. It can kind of personalize this message. And it doesn't just have to be a chatbot. You know, it can be this kind of interactive experience where indeed you are talking to Santa. I don't know. I hope you can post the URL over here.

So everybody on the line here can try this out. Yeah, we will. Yeah. And you know, you brought up a good point there, you know, Marco, and that AI is multimodal, right? Like, I think it took so long for many, even enterprise companies to fully get on board with generative AI that, you know, initially people just thought of it as, you know, bits and bytes. You know, they thought of it as just text. You know, can you speak a little bit, you know, before we dive back into the Create Real Magic campaign? Can you speak a little bit on what the Azure, you know, the new Foundry offers and even the fact that now it's multimodal?

Right. Well, the Foundry offers, I mean, there is a web portal in there and you can kind of go in there and try out all these different services. You could try the real-time playground where you can talk to it and that kind of thing. And the multimodal capabilities, you know, put in images and have it, you know, cogitate on that. So there's this web portal. There is an SDK. It's kind of the programming model that you use to actually integrate this. stuff into your applications. And the other thing that we announced here at Ignite is the new agent service. Because when you think about it, I mean, where AI is going now is because, you know, it's not just a chat bot, but it's also not just question answering either. Now it's going to a place where it's going to take action on your behalf. I mean, yesterday, in front of a live audience here of hundreds of people,

I built an agent on the fly that can make bookings in my Outlook calendar. It actually takes actions on my behalf. It can do all these kinds of things, you know, connect to third-party systems and outlook and dynamics and, you know, SAP and all these things. It can do stuff for you. It doesn't just have to answer questions anymore. And in the case of your application, I mean, it did something for me. It made me a snow globe. Yeah. And maybe Pertique, let's talk about that a little more because, you know, when I've asked you the first question, you talked about, you know, kind of the history of, you know, Santa and Coca-Cola and going back to 1931. As strange as it sounds, I think some of my earliest thoughts as a kid of Santa were probably in those very, you know,

nostalgic and classic Coca-Cola commercials with Santa. So can you talk a little bit about that process and maybe even some of the challenges, right, of still, you know, paying kind of homage to that nostalgic, you know, Santa Claus of old of Coca-Cola company and still preserving that and giving consumers this new experience. Talk a little bit about what that. was like in the process to still make it that authentic Coca-Cola Santa. Absolutely, absolutely. So one thing at Coca-Cola marketing, we take care and we're very obsessed about is keeping roots into our heritage and who we are.

So that's why you have seen that Coca-Cola logo has not changed from very, very long. It's 140-year old or young company. But the enterprise has that belief that it's an icon. It's not logo. It's a pop culture icon. And so as Santa. Santa is a pop culture character. And everyone has their Santa stories and their imagery and all those elements.

And now we are talking to new generation. So we need to look at things from how we keep the connected to who we are, our originality and authentic perspective of the brand, but then bring those experiences and engagement in much more cutting-edge way. So that was the starting point. Now, with that, Santa, yes, we spent a lot of time in our archive

looking at how his forehead looks like and what was the original painting and multiple paintings and how his dress looks like, what is different than other images, of Santa around, how we can create this authentic Santa from 1931 and bring it to. So a lot of work from our design team, our global design team. So that's one thing. Working with this company called mimic production in Germany, they helped us create this

3D avatar digital dream. And then we wanted to make sure that this Santa is not kind of a one. one time you can have conversation and get bored. So it's very authentic, it's real time, you can ask any question, you can ask any, it's not just no globe related question, but you can ask a question about reindeer or what's the weather in Lapland or all sorts of why, how he distributes the gifts. Oh, interesting, I should have grilled my Santa. So yeah, so you can ask those kind of a very authentic questions, whatever comes to your mind

related to Santa and Christmas, and he will converse with you, right? So that element of engagement is very important. That's a deep engagement because people come to this kind of platform. They put their data. They come. We want them to have a very unique and authentic experience, which only Coca-Cola can do. Yeah. And speaking of experiences, Patika, I want to ask you maybe zoom out a little bit

because it seems like, you know, Coca-Cola company, one of the most iconic brands ever, has really leaned into generative AI. And right, you're very involved in that. I remember seeing, you know, the AI Coca-Cola flavors. And, you know, recently I know there's, there was even, you know, a couple series of AI commercials, right, tapping into the, you know, nostalgic, you know, commercials of around Christmas time. But maybe talk about maybe some of the other efforts that the Coca-Cola company has been

making around generative AI and, you know, and the rest of the rest of the company. because everyone's talking about those, you know, the AI commercials right now. I thought they were great, by the way. Yeah. Thank you. So we started working with Gen. AI in mid-2020,

before GPD got launched, actually we worked with Stability AI in preparation of our another campaign called The Masterpiece. You may have seen that film where the bottle travels through different paintings, and we were working with Andy Wea Hall Foundation and many other art estates.

So that's where we needed to actually bring sophistication of perfection of the art, right? And every art we were working with, we needed to understand their brush strokes. And the art came from different genre, different century, different time. So we had to understand, and that's where Jan E.I. started, we started using.

And that's how it was my introduction to Janiai, that way in practice. And then we were the first one to collaborate with our Open AI in early 23. And with Bayne Alliance, we went into that partnership. We were the first early when everyone was so skeptical about what's Gen AI and what's Open AI even. We went into that partnership. And then we did this year 3000. We created co-creating. co-created a flavor of year 3000, the future, taste of future with AI. So we used AI what we want to do again, we want to create experience, not ads. And I'll come to the story, the films you mentioned.

Those are also coming from 1995, 30 years back those films were created and we cherish them. They're part of our history and we are so much proud of holidays are coming. That jingle, that song, that film, it has, it's timeless. And what we wanted to do, we wanted to, we said, let's take this. Now, those films, some films where we create, we need, the need of that film is to show reality. The real humans drinking food, drinking and eating food, and all those. Some of the films requires fantastical, hyper-realistic treatment. Yeah. This holidays are coming, film comes in that genre, fantastical, hyper-realistic. And AI as a tool does much better job in a fantastical world in that type of imagination

versus the realistic world. Sure. So that's why we needed to, we said, okay, for this particular project gen AI makes perfect sense so we need to use every technology for right reason and for this one it made perfect sense to us then we actually went to three different production studios one in LA one in San Francisco a tech lab actually and one in Kola Lumpur in Malaysia and we said we gave them the brief we said look we want to reimagine this with technology to use whatever technology you need we actually gave them some guidance about using runway ml or luma labs or leonado a i because they are our kind of long-term partners

but the other side we told them that stay on the narrative keep your human human creative directors decides so all the creative decisions are made by human but then superpower of imagination got unlocked by i right And that's the perfect combination for any next level kind of work. It's kind of human and machine working together. And we thought we go to three and maybe a couple of them or one of them will work out well. All three worked out well. And then all three had a slightly different storyline, but it stays on the same brief.

And we said, why don't we just take all three and kind of put it out in a, to people and that's what we did. Now we are really proud of that work. It has created a lot of debates and discussions and we respect every point of view. But what we saw, a lot of people are coming and saying that, hmm, my first reaction was, how can why Coca-Cola is doing this?

But then when I saw it, it made sense to us. And then when we saw the long version and it's kind of in its full beauty, it started working for us and kind of for them. And that's where a lot of people, actually, research agencies are doing their independent research on that because the quality of whatever other benchmark we had for filmmaking, AI filmmaking, has changed now. Yeah, absolutely. So that's one thing.

Another one is like consumers don't think like, hey, I'm looking at EI film or I'm looking CGI film. Consumer sees that, okay, it kind of connects with me. It has that music for this all three film is created by real humans. So we rescored music three times with three different group of musicians. Oh, I didn't know that piece. So that's real human. So, so those kind of thing, it's a right mix, it's a right balance where humans and machines coming together and creating something which is not yet created. And we as a Coca-Cola company want to stay ahead of the curve. Yeah.

And keep pushing that well up. Yeah. I love that. And that's such a great example. So, you know, all right, let's take a quick break to shout out our partners at the Microsoft WorkLab podcast. So why should you listen to the Work Lab podcast for Microsoft? It explores the questions business leaders are asking. How can they guide their organization's AI adoption journey?

How can AI help them maximize value and create new products and business models? How should they help their team reskill for this new era of work? Why is it important to be completely transparent about when and how you use AI? Find the answers on WorkLab. That's W-O-R-K-L-A-B, no spaces available wherever you get your podcasts. As we wrap up here, you know, Marco, I'm going to ask you because Pertique just gave us a great example of, you know, one of the biggest companies in the world, how they're using generative AI and Azure and everything that we've been hearing about at the Ignite conference here

to really reimagine what their relationships look like with consumers. So how would you say or what would you encourage as we wrap up, you know, decision makers who are saying, hey, how can we start using co-pilot more or co-pilot better or, you know, Azure Foundry? Like what's your takeaway for those people listening? Well, I mean, taking it back to what they did with the real magic here, trustworthy AI is really the key. And you know, you think about what you guys did. I mean, you're exposing this to the world. You expect a bunch of kids to be using this stuff. And we work together a lot

on, well, we have these products that enable trustworthy AI so that it doesn't go off the rail, so that Santa doesn't say weird stuff. So that if people say weird stuff to Santa, Santa deflex it. He's like, you know what, let's keep talking about Christmas, reindeer and stuff like that. So I think key to the Azure AI Foundry and really all the AI we do is this notion of trustworthy AI, and that certainly is key to the success of any AI project, including Coca-Cola's Real Magic. Absolutely, Marco. And that's one thing for films also.

We had to work with our production studios to say, what is our ethical prompting strategy? So we had given them guidelines, and they all kind of followed that prompting strategy, and they need to give back us their prompts. So we keep that check because this is new. This is experiment. We are pushing the envelope, but we need to be responsible. So that's where our legal team, our tech team, our design team, everyone coming together and kind of protecting what we need to protect as a responsible brand and as a company.

But same time, push the envelope and let's do something new and cutting edge. I love that. I love that. And, you know, as we wrap up here, y'all, I think that was. a great one-to-punch here of Prateek and Marco, just really helping us and hopefully helping you all look at generative AI, maybe in a different way. You know, through this Create Real Magic campaign from the Coca-Cola company, I think that we all just got a very unique firsthand perspective of ways that you can actually create real and magical

connections with consumers. So Marco and Prateek, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join the Everyday AI show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. All right. And hey, y'all, that was a lot. And I know we were talking a lot about these campaigns. And you probably want to go create some real magic to with the Coca-Cola Santa. So make sure if you haven't already, go to Your Everyday AI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. And we're going to be recapping and sharing some. I think we're going to have some behind the scenes on how all of it was made as well. So thank you for tuning in and make sure to join us tomorrow. And every day for more

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