A Dutch McDonald's commercial was made entirely using AI, and the backlash has been severe, according to NDTV.
The ad featured families grappling with the chaos of the holiday season, including decorations, traffic jams, and family gatherings. The whole ad was punctuated by a satirical soundtrack dubbed "The Most Terrible Time of the Year."
McDonald's has released an AI-generated Christmas ad
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) December 8, 2025
The studio behind it says they 'hardly slept' for several weeks while writing AI prompts and refining the shots — 'AI didn't make this film. We did'
Comments have been turned off on YouTube pic.twitter.com/Es5ROvI7n2
The reception to the ad has been so negative that McDonald's pulled the ad off YouTube after closing comments. The marketing firm behind the ad has defended its use of AI.
"AI didn't 'make' McDonald's Christmas ad. We did," said The Sweetshop CEO Melanie Bridge in a recent interview with Little Black Book. "This script was always designed for AI, not as a gimmick, but because the scale simply couldn't exist in live action without a monstrous budget and a freezing European winter shoot."
Another food and beverage giant, Coca-Cola, recently got into hot water over its own AI-powered ad campaign.
While public opinion has squarely criticized the quality of the output and the erosion of creative professions, there's an environmental cost to generating AI video content as well.
Increased data center use for AI has single-handedly ramped up energy use and subsequent pollution. Training AI models can require a lot of energy, and work on this project also took several weeks, according to Culture Crave on X, with some wondering in the comments how much more effective such an ad could really be over a more organically created one on a smaller budget.
Regardless of its effectiveness in helping a company attract and retain customers to make up for its budget without repelling other potential customers, an ad like this carries a hefty amount of atmospheric pollution along with it.
Pollution from dirty energy warms our planet, which in turn exacerbates growingly destructive weather patterns. This can create problems in agriculture, housing, and other areas of living.
Social media reactions to the McDonald's AI ad were decidedly negative.
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"I'm old enough to remember when McDonald's was the gold standard of advertising," wrote one X user. "This is just a terrible commercial."
"Finally their ads match the food, mass production with not much soul," replied another.
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