The 45-second TV commercial, produced by TBWA\Neboko and The Sweetshop for McDonald's Netherlands, takes Christmas as "the worst time of year," portraying McDonald's as a refuge from the chaos of the holiday season.
The video uses AI imagery to recreate "disastrous" Christmas moments: stressful family dinners, chaotic shopping, off-key carol singing, failed baking, or disastrous tree decorating, ending with the message: "Hide in McDonald's until January arrives."
However, viewers immediately reacted negatively to both the quality and the message of the advertisement. The AI images were jerky and disjointed, and the faces and movements were distorted, making the entire video unsettling and even creepy.
According to Futurism , the constantly changing scene editing technique is how producers mask the fact that AI often loses consistency after only a few seconds.
Viewers described the advertisement as "cold," "emotionless," and "inhuman," questioning why a large corporation like McDonald's would choose AI over a professional creative team.
The video only garnered 20,000 views but received an overwhelming number of negative comments. McDonald's had to disable comments last weekend before completely removing the video.
The wave of criticism reflects growing consumer fatigue with AI-powered advertising, mirroring reactions to recent campaigns by Coca-Cola and Google.
While McDonald's remained silent, The Sweetshop responded with a defensive statement, which only fueled further ridicule.
CEO Melanie Bridge asserted that this was a high-quality product, not a seasonal experiment, revealing that the team had “worked virtually non-stop for 7 weeks,” creating “thousands of AI runs” and refining the model to overcome its “illusions.”
“I don’t see this as a cute experiment,” she said. “This is proof that when engineering and technology meet intentionally, it can create something cinematic. It wasn’t AI that made this film. We did.”
While the production team boasts, the message from consumers is clear: the holiday season needs human emotion. When brands prioritize speed and cost-effectiveness from AI, viewers are interested in the authenticity, creativity, and human effort behind the content they want to enjoy.
(According to interestingengineering)
Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/quang-cao-giang-sinh-bi-nem-da-kich-liet-mcdonald-s-phai-go-voi-khoi-youtube-2471463.html
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