McDonald’s pulls AI-generated Christmas ad after backlash over ‘soulless’ visuals and holiday chaos
- McDonald’s has stopped running an AI‑generated Christmas commercial
- Viewers complained about its eerie visuals and chaotic style
- There may not be much of a public appetite for AI‑made ads
A McDonald’s Netherlands commercial made with AI has vanished from screens after it provoked an avalanche of mockery and irritation from viewers. Complaints about unsettling visuals and an oddly violent tone for a holiday ad meant the ad for “the most terrible time of the year” only appeared for a few weeks.
Ad 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 holiday season using slightly off people and settings familiar to AI video viewers. Balloon hands, fireball cookies, and eyes a little too wide proclaimed that holiday stress can only be relieved with McDonald’s. McDonald’s removed the video from YouTube three days after launch, disabling comments before delisting it entirely. But it had already been scraped and spread around 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 a handcrafted film made through enormous effort. The process, they claimed, involved seven weeks of sleepless nights and ten AI and post-production specialists.
“We generated what felt like dailies – thousands of takes – then shaped them in the edit just as we would on any high-craft production. This wasn’t an AI trick. It was a film,” Melanie Bridge, CEO of The Sweetshop, wrote in a response to the removal of the ad (itself since removed). “I don’t see this spot as a novelty or a cute seasonal experiment. To me, it’s evidence of something much bigger: that when craft and technology meet with intention, they can create work that feels genuinely cinematic. So no – AI didn’t make this film. We did.”
Yes, the ad comes off like a corporate attempt at a shortcut around making an actual commercial while pretending to represent artistic risk-taking. But it is also true that wrestling AI hallucinations into coherence is hardly 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. Very much the opposite of the cozy seasonal feeling McDonald’s likely hoped to evoke.
AI ad failure
Generative AI tools are now cheap, accessible, and fast. Marketing teams around the world are using them to make 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 trip into 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 more disliked. When it comes to tone, continuity, and visual coherence, AI still can’t hold a candle to human production.
McDonald’s may not suffer long-term damage from this, but the incident will live on as 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 ill watching the commercial.
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McDonald’s has stopped running an AI‑generated Christmas commercial Viewers complained about its eerie visuals and chaotic style There may not be much of a public appetite for AI‑made ads A McDonald’s Netherlands commercial made with AI has vanished from screens after it provoked an avalanche of mockery and irritation from…
