- McDonald’s has stopped running an AI-generated Christmas commercial
- Viewers complained about its creepy visuals and chaotic style
- There may not be much public appetite for AI-generated ads
A McDonald’s Holland advert made with artificial intelligence has disappeared from screens after it provoked an avalanche of mockery and irritation from viewers. Complaints about disturbing images and an oddly violent tone to a holiday ad meant the ad for “the scariest time of the year” only appeared for a few weeks.
Advertising agency The Sweetshop produced the AI video using its proprietary engine called The Gardening Club. It combined several fast-paced sequences of disastrous moments during the holiday season, using slightly bad people and settings familiar to AI video viewers. Balloon hands, fireball cakes and slightly too wide eyes proclaimed that holiday stress can only be alleviated with McDonald’s. McDonald’s removed the video from YouTube three days after its launch and disabled comments before removing 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—and then shaped them in the edit, just as we would on any high-end production. This wasn’t an AI trick. It was a movie,” wrote Melanie Bridge, CEO of The Sweetshop, in a response to the ad’s removal (itself since removed). “I don’t see this place as a novelty or a cute seasonal experiment. To me, it’s proof of something much bigger: that when craft and technology meet with intention, they can create work that feels truly cinematic. So no – AI didn’t make this film. We did.”
Yes, the ad comes off as a corporate attempt at a shortcut to making an actual ad while pretending to represent artistic risk-taking. But it’s also true that breaking 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 was probably hoping to evoke.
AI ad failure
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 is certainly not the first brand to travel into the uncanny valley this year. Coca-Cola’s 2025 holiday campaign received similar criticism for its jarring pace and algorithmic blandness. AI-generated advertising is becoming more common – and more unsavory. 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 sick when they see the ad.
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