US EditionMcdonald’s Pulls Ai-Generated Christmas ad After Backlash over 'Soulless' Visuals and Holiday Chaos
McDonald’s Netherlands removed its AI-assisted Christmas ad after harsh criticism for low-quality visuals and negative holiday portrayal, highlighting public resistance to AI in creative work.
- This past week, McDonald's Netherlands removed its Christmas ad from YouTube after widespread criticism, first disabling comments, then delisting and finally making the video private.
- The 45-second ad titled 'The Most Terrible Time of the Year' relied on generative-AI clips to parody a classic jingle and depict holiday mishaps, prompting immediate mockery from media outlets such as The A.V. Club and Futurism.
- Produced with TBWA\Neboko, the studio said human editors shaped thousands of AI-generated takes during seven weeks with up to 10 specialists using The Gardening Club engine.
- Public pressure pushed McDonald's to withdraw the ad, demonstrating how consumers and advocates can rapidly force corporate reversals amid intense scrutiny from social-media users.
- Amid broader debate, experts flagged threats to creative jobs and AI data centers' environmental toll, noting limited transparency from major AI companies like OpenAI and Amazon.
14 Articles
14 Articles
Why the McDonald’s AI commercial flopped
Be afraid, be very afraid. That’s what we’d been told in the advertising and commercial production industry. AI is coming for your job. It’ll be faster than you, more creative than you and certainly more cost-effective than you. Well, if the McDonald’s new – but swiftly deleted – Christmas ad was anything to go by, we haven’t, for the moment, got too much to worry about. The completely AI ad was produced for the Netherlands but thanks to YouT…
McDonald's pulls controversial Christmas commercial within days of being uploaded: 'Offensive from every angle'
Many people remember Coca-Cola's ill-conceived and poorly received AI-generated Christmas ad in 2024, largely due to the vocal backlash that followed. But as Futurism reported, McDonald's either missed the memo or forgot about it, leading to a wave of negative feedback. What's happening? According to Futurism, McDonald's "decided to get in on the corporate slopfest" for a Christmas ad; "AI slop" is a pejorative neologism used to describe low-qua…
McDonald’s removed an AI-made Christmas commercial after intense public backlash.
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