| Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter: |
| • The Big Read: Data centers are hiring James Bond–style security consultants |
| • The Arena: Is this German club the next Wrexham? |
| • Plus, our Recommendations: “Coining It,” “Gotham at War,” “The Gods of New York” and “The Lowdown” |
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| Many fears about artificial intelligence have at least some validity. I do worry how it exacerbates geopolitical tensions. I worry it may quietly weave existing biases and prejudices into different parts of life. I worry ChatGPT, an inveterate fibber, may have a better handle on the concepts of honesty and straightforward communication than many OpenAI executives. |
| But another AI concern keeps resurfacing, and it’s driving me nuts, and I wish people would let it go: that AI will ruin the art form of advertising. |
| Take the brouhaha over Coke’s latest AI Christmas ads. Hating on Coca-Cola is turning into a veritable holiday tradition, quite like eggnog and frantic travel. Recall that a similar uproar arose when the company did the same thing a year ago. |
| Look, they’re ads. By their basic nature, they exist as one of the most naked forms of capitalism: They’re as pure an expression of that medium as an Alpine lake. I see absolutely nothing wrong with the melding of two capitalistic forces, while I acknowledge that one has been around long enough to fool people into thinking it’s a high-minded power, and the other is so new as to inspire a reflexive sort of panic. |
| I think anyone in advertising who’s not using AI to some degree is foolish: Cozying up with Google’s Veo to develop the next Depends ad doesn’t jeopardize any Oscar dreams. (It might lower costs and boost some profits—core principles of capitalism—though so far we don’t quite know to what extent.) And I think it’s just astonishing that anyone is still willing to get annoyed with companies such as Coca-Cola for commissioning commercials made with AI. |
| This year, Coca-Cola released two ads for its “Holidays Are Coming” campaign, one of which was made by Secret Level, a San Francisco–based creative and animation studio with clients throughout media and entertainment. Jason Zada, a longtime Mad Man, founded the company in 2023 and worked on an AI Christmas ad for Coke last year, too. |
| Since AI video technology has improved significantly over the past year, Zada believes few people would’ve realized Secret Level’s latest spot used AI if Coke hadn’t been so forthright about it. Earlier, Coke screened the ad with focus groups. “And when they tested the ad, it tested very, very well,” Zada said. “When you tell people, ‘Hey, it’s AI,’ there’s this negative reaction to it because of whatever preconceived notion that people have of AI.” |
| Speaking generously, I’d describe Secret Level’s 78-second ad as “cute enough.” It bounces around the world to different cities, with local creatures eagerly awaiting the dawn of the holiday season: scarf-clad sea lions in San Francisco, koalas in thick jackets in Australia. You get it—I need not go on. As I said: It’s as unextraordinary as 99.98% of all ads. (And as my Australia-born colleague Martin Peers pointed out, it’s kinda dumb, too: Christmas falls in the summer Down Under. Why do the koalas need jackets?) |
| When I spoke with Zada, he made sure to point out a particular fact: Secret Level’s ads always involve some combination of AI and traditional digital software, and most originate with human-made sketches, though he wouldn’t describe the exact breakdown of how much of each was used in the Coke ad. Assembling the sea lions and koalas took about a month. Without AI, it would’ve taken more like three months—and possibly as long as half a year, he said. |
| Zada maintains another belief that AI opponents will consider as softheaded as actually expecting Santa to show up. He thinks AI will save Hollywood and Madison Avenue so much money, they’ll fund many more projects than in the past, including many artistic ones. (The counterargument: Sure, we get more projects, but they’re all of diminished value, since by stoking AI, we let slop culture proliferate. Which, all right, maybe!) |
| “Personally, I think we’re going to see, like, a renaissance of indie filmmaking,” he said. “If a normal animated feature takes at least $60 million to make, and we could make one for $20 million, we’ll make a lot more movies.” |
| Zada went on. “Hopefully, we can just create more content. I mean, that’s what everybody wants.” Uh-huh. |
| What else from the week… |
| • Cluely, the AI school-cheating tool, provided a two-part lesson: A charming amount of rascallyness can only get a 21-year-old CEO so far before the act gets a little stale. And to rephrase a talking point from a major Cluely investor—Andreessen Horowitz—maybe momentum isn’t a moat. |
| • Big-ass gongs for sales celebrations? Lame. Bret Taylor’s Sierra uses an 11-foot alphorn made from California redwood. |
| • The Wall Street Journal found perhaps the one place in Japan that isn’t overflowing with American tourists: Nagoya, the country’s fourth-largest city, which is newly determined to get people to step off the bullet trains that zoom past it to more popular destinations like Osaka and Kyoto. |
| • Labubus are getting a theme park, while a pair of popular Roblox games, Grow a Garden and Jailbreak, will get film versions. |
| • Is AI this century’s transcontinental railroad? Derek Thompson, former Atlantic staffer and co-author with Ezra Klein of “Abundance,” spent a long time exploring the analogy—and concluded it would fit better if the AI boom had more government backing. A day later, OpenAI’s chief financial officer suggested the government should consider guaranteeing the company’s loans. |
| • Apple’s Siri still sounds bad, and the company may turn to Google’s Gemini to get better, but the new warbling intro sound for Apple TV sounds pretty neat. It was created by Finneas, Grammy-winning musician and brother of singer Billie Eilish. That was an infinitely better strategy than the alternative: “Hey, Siri, how do you say ‘tudum’ in Apple?” |
| • Following Instagram’s attempt to co-opt the Motion Picture Association’s ratings system, the MPA has sent Instagram a cease-and-desist letter—a very PG way of telling someone to go pound sand.—Abram Brown |
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| As the AI boom continues to intensify, the data centers powering the technology have become as valuable as bank vaults. The companies building and operating those facilities are rushing to figure out how to fortify them against everything from corporate sabotage to citizen protests to geopolitical espionage. |
| For such advice, they’re turning to a growing cottage industry of consulting firms, our Jemima McEvoy reports in this week’s Big Read. These consultancies specialize in red teaming, among other things—testing a facility’s defenses by sending out staff to try to break into data centers. It keeps people like 31-year-old Alex Leithiser from London-headquartered Control Risks quite busy crisscrossing the globe—yes, really—at his clients’ behest. “My wife’s co-workers think I’m a spy,” he said. |
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| Unlike nearly every other major European city, Berlin doesn’t have a major soccer club that can attract worldwide attention. That’s why Monarch Collective, an American investment firm that focuses on women’s sports, has taken a new stake in FC Viktoria Berlin, our Sara Germano reports. |
| Abram Brown is the editor of The Information's Weekend section. You can reach him at abe@theinformation.com or find him on X. |
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| Listening: “Coining It” |
| Blackpool, England, a seaside pleasure town clinging tightly to a more beloved past—sort of like Coney Island or Santa Cruz, Calif.—isn’t the most obvious setting for a cybercaper, which “Coining It” host Lewis Goodall makes abundantly clear. Still, it does make the tale spun by Goodall, the youthful co-creator of a popular British current events pod, “The News Agents,” all the more interesting: How exactly did local man James Parker—an aging, reclusive computer geek confined to a motorized wheelchair—pile up enough money to begin trying to give much of it away to his less fortunate friends and acquaintances? (“He just chucked a fiver at me and said, ‘Get yourself a pint,’” recalls one pub mate.) The answer involves bitcoin and fraud, and to say more would spoil Goodall’s glibbish outing.—Abram Brown |
| Reading: “Gotham at War” by Mike Wallace and “The Gods of New York” by Jonathan Mahler |
| Since many readers of this column live in the Bay Area, I usually hesitate to hype a lot of New York–specific content. But gosh, a great number of you have such opinions about New York! I had no idea you cared so much about us New Yorkers. |
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