McDonald’s AI Christmas Ad Faces Backlash

McDonald’s Dutch division recently came under fire for an AI-generated advertisement that controversially labeled Christmas as “the worst time of the year.” Due to the significant backlash, the company swiftly took down the video from YouTube.

In a bid to adopt the rising trend of AI marketing, McDonald’s partnered with the advertising agency TBWA\Neboko to create a 45-second commercial for the holiday season. However, the attempt to leverage AI backfired spectacularly, drawing sharp criticism and mockery for what many called “AI slop” and its negative take on Christmas. Eventually, the ad was removed from their YouTube channel but has since been reuploaded by others, remaining available online.

The ad portrayed the holidays as “the scariest time of the year” through a series of chaotic, rapidly shifting scenes, typical of AI-generated content. Issues like jarring visuals, uneven color grading, and unrealistic physics highlighted the common flaws of such automated creations. It seemed designed to distract viewers from the AI’s struggle to maintain narrative continuity.

Public response was overwhelmingly disapproving, with a flood of negative comments across YouTube and other social platforms. One Instagram user remarked, “The future is here and it doesn’t look very good,” while another questioned why an established company like McDonald’s couldn’t hire a dedicated production team for a higher-quality advertisement. The backlash prompted the fast-food chain to initially disable comments and later remove all related videos from YouTube.

In defense of the ad, The Sweetshop, the production firm hired by TBWA\Neboko, issued a statement. Their CEO noted that substantial effort had gone into the project, with up to ten AI and post-production specialists working for seven weeks. They argued that the process of refining the AI output was comparable to a traditional film’s production timeline.

Regardless of the defense, the prevailing public sentiment was clear. While advertising is everywhere, audiences seem to favor commercials created by human professionals over AI-generated content. This incident marked McDonald’s debut in AI-generated marketing, although the company had previously dabbled in AI, sharing similarly poorly received AI-generated Studio Ghibli-style memes on social media.