- McDonald’s has stopped running an AI-generated Christmas commercial
- Viewers complained about its creepy images and chaotic style.
- There may not be much public appetite for AI-created ads
A McDonald’s Netherlands commercial made with artificial intelligence disappeared from screens after causing an avalanche of ridicule and irritation among viewers. Complaints about disturbing images and a strangely violent tone for a Christmas ad meant the “most terrible time of the year” ad only appeared for a few weeks.
Advertising agency The Sweetshop produced the AI video using its proprietary engine called The Gardening Club. It combined multiple quick sequences of disastrous moments during the Christmas season using slightly different people and settings familiar to AI video viewers. Balloon hands, fireball cookies, and wide eyes proclaimed that Christmas stress can only be relieved by McDonald’s. McDonald’s removed the video from YouTube three days after it was released, disabling comments before delisting it entirely. But it had already been deleted and spread on the Internet.
The Sweetshop, the production company behind the campaign, issued a defensive public statement positioning the ad not as an AI stunt but as an artisanal film made with enormous effort. The process, they claimed, involved seven weeks of sleepless nights and ten AI and post-production specialists.
“We generated what looked like dailies (thousands of shots) and then shaped them in editing just as we would in any high-end production. This wasn’t an AI trick. This was a movie,” Melanie Bridge, CEO of The Sweetshop, wrote in response to the ad’s removal (which has since been removed). “I don’t see this ad as a novelty or a cute seasonal experiment. To me, it’s evidence of something much bigger: that when craftsmanship and technology combine with intention, they can create work that feels genuinely cinematic. So no, AI didn’t make this movie. We did.”
Yes, the ad seems like a corporate attempt to take a shortcut to making a real commercial while purporting to represent artistic risk-taking. But it is also true that fighting AI hallucinations to give them coherence is not easy. Making bad AI look presentable takes time and creativity.
Still, a failure at this level feels like an attack on the viewer’s intelligence, not to mention taste. Quite the opposite of the cozy seasonal feeling McDonald’s probably hoped to evoke.
AI Ads Glitch
Generative AI tools are now cheap, accessible and fast. Marketing teams around the world use them to create ads quickly and cheaply. But this ad shows that just because you can make an ad with AI doesn’t mean you should.
And McDonald’s certainly isn’t the first brand to travel to the uncanny valley this year. Coca-Cola’s 2025 holiday campaign received similar criticism for its jarring pacing and algorithmic blandness. AI-generated commercials are becoming more common and less appreciated. When it comes to tone, continuity, and visual coherence, AI still can’t compare to human production.
McDonald’s may not suffer long-term damage from this, but the incident will remain another example of what happens when brands treat AI as a gimmick. You can try to sell fries with an AI video, but it won’t work if people feel bad watching the commercial.
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