McDonald’s has quietly pulled a festive advertisement made using AI after it came in for a torrent of abuse online.
The 45-second clip, made for its Netherlands division, satirically brands the holiday season the “most terrible time of the year” and subjects viewers to a chaotic barrage of scenes including people getting stuck in fairy lights, burning cookies, and starting kitchen fires.
None of the cuts last more than a few seconds, in what has become a telltale sign of an AI-generated video, and it mostly fails to replicate human emotions and the laws of physics.
One comment posted on YouTube read: “Even without all the AI slop this ad feels incredibly odd. Ditch your family and hid…
McDonald’s has quietly pulled a festive advertisement made using AI after it came in for a torrent of abuse online.
The 45-second clip, made for its Netherlands division, satirically brands the holiday season the “most terrible time of the year” and subjects viewers to a chaotic barrage of scenes including people getting stuck in fairy lights, burning cookies, and starting kitchen fires.
None of the cuts last more than a few seconds, in what has become a telltale sign of an AI-generated video, and it mostly fails to replicate human emotions and the laws of physics.
One comment posted on YouTube read: “Even without all the AI slop this ad feels incredibly odd. Ditch your family and hide in McDonalds because Christmas sucks?” Others called it "creepy" and "poorly edited."
Another comment on Instagram said: "No actors, no camera team... welcome to the future of filmmaking. And it sucks."
The fast food giant took the video down from YouTube after having initially disabled the comments section over the weekend, but it is still up on some advertising archive sites.
McDonald’s Netherlands said the video was meant to "reflect the stressful moments that can occur during the holidays" but had decided to remove the advert. "This moment serves as an important learning as we explore the effective use of AI," it said, per BBC.
Melanie Bridge, chief executive of film production company The Sweetshop, which made the clip, wrote on Instagram that “understandably, a lot of people have been asking me how a traditional film company like ours could ethically make something like this.”
She added: “The hours that went into this job far exceeded a traditional shoot. Ten people, five weeks, full-time. Blood, sweat, tears, and an honestly ridiculous amount of coaxing to get the models to behave and to honor the creative brief shot by shot.”
Despite widespread derision over the low quality of AI-generated video content, big brands are increasingly using the technology to make adverts more cheaply. Coca-Cola was pilloried last month for its own serving of festive slop featuring uncanny polar bears and – er, sloths? – romping around a snow-covered landscape.
McDonald’s ad, meanwhile, was set to the Christmas song It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Darre van Dijk, chief creative officer at TBWA\Neboko, the ad agency behind the project, said: “From the start, we wanted to challenge the conventions of holiday advertising. It all started with the idea of rewriting one of the most iconic Christmas songs.”
It ended, like so many examples of AI trying to replace human creativity, in ridicule.