Coca-Cola’s bet on AI

Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer joins the Live show to discuss how Coca-Cola is using AI for customer service and custom bottling.

Video transcript

DAVID BRIGGS: Coca-Cola, meanwhile, reporting better than expected first quarter earnings. You could see the stock, wow, down just a bit, driven by higher prices, higher demand.

But there was one phrase that is raising some eyebrows here. It's the company says it's, quote, exploring ways to leverage AI. It is the theme of last and this earnings period. Josh Schafer here to take a closer look at the hot new trend in corporate America.

How exactly is Coca-Cola going to take advantage of AI?

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, Dave. I think the point here is we could probably talk about this with every company we're going to hear from over the next couple weeks, and have been hearing from, right. But Coca-Cola's specific strategy has to do with art. So you can use AI to create art that Coca-Cola then says they'll take the top art projects and put those out into the world.

Basically, one of them is a fun cat with a can. That was one created AI image. That's the lead image--

DAVID BRIGGS: Awesome.

JOSH SCHAFER: --on Yahoo Finance right now, out on the website. But I think the broader thing here that I was sort of thinking about when breaking this down today is it's really reminiscent of-- right now, it's AI. In 2018, it was blockchain. In 2021, it was the metaverse. Everyone sort of has to mention this right now, right.

You go back to 2018, Amazon was telling you that blockchain was going to be a big part of AWS. Look at Amazon's last earnings call. Guess what they didn't mention once? Blockchain. Coca-Cola was in the metaverse two years ago. They were telling you about NFTs. Guess what Coca-Cola didn't talk about today on their earnings call? The metaverse or NFTs.

So you've got to sort of wait to see where this plays out. AI is going to be a part of every company, right, for what it could do for workers. But it's not necessarily an investment play when these companies name them, when they're naming AI. And I think that's the important distinction to make, right.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah. That is a very, very important distinction to make. And something that you also used in your article was from Baird's market strategist, Michael Antonelli, when he was telling Yahoo Finance that, what is it, AI is the second most asked client question, just in terms of where they're trying to figure out where they want to put their money. AI is right up there. So that might be, I don't know, some signs that a bubble could be forming within the space, at least for now, from an investor standpoint.

DIANE KING HALL: Because what is Coke doing in AI?

JOSH SCHAFER: Michael's perspective was interesting, right. So he talking about tech earnings and sort of what to expect in those AI players like a Google and Microsoft, where he was saying, I am watching what AI is doing there, I'm not really watching what AI is doing in the case of like a Coke, right. And I think it's interesting, he said, you're going to see a million ETFs, sorry, a million ETFs, and a million different marketing pitches that come with AI. This is one of those marketing pitches.

Where else did we see ETFs? Where else did we see marketing pitches? Blockchain, metaverse. So it's all sort of in that line. But tomorrow, we're going to want to know what Microsoft says about it and we're going to want to know what Alphabet says about it. So it matters, just in a prism.

DAVID BRIGGS: James Quincey, the Coke CEO, said this morning, AI impacts, quote, their entire marketing ecosystem. Not one small sliver. It's not NFTs, we can agree on that.

JOSH SCHAFER: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

DAVID BRIGGS: Huge story moving forward but--

JOSH SCHAFER: I'm just curious what the rhetoric is about AI in five years.

SEANA SMITH: Or even two years, right?

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, right.

DAVID BRIGGS: I'll take the over. I'll just take the over.

Josh Schafer--

JOSH SCHAFER: You always take the over.

DAVID BRIGGS: I do, don't I? Good to see you, brother. Thank you.