Progressive sidelined Flo for AI-generated animals — viewers called it 'AI slop'

In November 2025, Progressive Insurance released 'Drive Like an Animal,' an AI-generated ad promoting its Snapshot usage-based insurance program. Instead of its two-decade-old mascot Flo appearing on screen, the spot showed AI-generated animals navigating traffic, narrated by Stephanie Courtney — the actress who plays Flo — in voiceover.

The reasoning inside Progressive's marketing team was that animals suit the cartoonish look AI video generation still produces better than human figures do, reducing the uncanny-valley effect that has tripped up other brands' AI ads. Viewers disagreed with the tradeoff: comments called the animation 'AI slop,' 'soulless,' 'terrible' and 'garbage,' with several noting that traditional animation from decades earlier looked more convincing.

Progressive kept the ad running rather than pulling it, treating the backlash as part of an ongoing, deliberate experiment in balancing AI production against the brand equity built around Flo's twenty-year run as a human, on-camera character.