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Using prompt injection to break big brands’ AI advertising gimmicks
Coca Cola harnessed AI to deliver holiday magic. It was easy to hack their brand assets.
A Festive Twist with AI: Coca-Cola’s Bold Move
Coca-Cola has always been a brand synonymous with holiday design, from the classic red to the iconic Sundblom Santa that has become the universal Santa look. This year, they’ve taken their festive spirit a notch higher with a unique AI-powered image generator, accessible at Create Real Magic. This platform is designed to craft charming, ornate greeting card images infused with the iconic Coca-Cola branding. It’s a novel idea, mixing technology with tradition in a way that’s classic Coca-Cola. But hold onto your reindeer! Let’s see how a playful twist on AI art prompts turns “Ho Ho Ho” into “Oh No No!”
The Reality: A Playground for Mischief
This tool was designed to let users create images using preselected options for style, subject, and scene, with an added option for customized prompts:
Carefully trained on Coca-Cola’s archive of Christmas imagery and brand assets, what could go possibly wrong? As it turns out, quite a bit. The tool, while meant to produce on-brand unique images, proved to be a fertile ground for prompting some truly bizarre holiday-themed anomalies.
You’re meant to make generic, charmingly inoffensive images like this:
Can we break it? You betcha. I’m going to show how easy it is to subvert content restrictions, and even big companies like Coke aren’t prepared.
The generator had some restrictions — certain words tripped moderation warnings or caused it to ignore the prompt and generate stock-standard images. Yet, the AI didn’t catch everything. For instance, rival brands like Pepsi were a no-go, but many unexpected terms slipped…
