AI-powered holiday ads catch eyes, but what about trust?

This festive season, artificial intelligence shifted from a backend enabler to a visible creative force in holiday advertising. Brands across markets adopted AI-generated films, worlds, and characters to achieve speed, scale, and spectacle at a time when attention is limited and production timelines are tight.

However, while AI-powered holiday ads improved efficiency, they also prompted audience and creative pushback, raising an important question for brands: when does efficiency begin to compromise emotional trust?

Why AI Holiday Ads Are Performing Better

From a production standpoint, AI’s festive appeal is easy to understand. The technology allows brands to create large-scale, culturally relevant stories without the logistical and financial weight of traditional shoots.

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Vishnu Srivatsav, Creative Head at 22feet Tribal, notes that AI has enabled brands to “tell festive stories with a certain degree of scale and cultural relevance without having to cast or travel or shoot.” The advantage, he adds, lies largely in cost efficiency and the ability to visualise ambitious narratives quickly.

AI has also reshaped how creatives approach experimentation during high-stakes festive periods. Faster prototyping, multiple visual iterations and shorter turnaround cycles have allowed brands to test more ideas before committing to a final execution, something that was previously expensive and time-consuming.

However, Srivatsav cautions against mistaking the tool for the idea itself. “The temptation and the danger is that one could think AI is the idea or a replacement for an idea,” he says, reinforcing that AI is most effective when it supports a strong creative vision rather than substituting for it.

Scale Versus Intimacy: A Fragile Balance

One of the most debated shifts brought on by AI is its impact on emotional intimacy. Amita Madhvani, Co-Founder of Equinox Virtual, argues that AI has changed how creators think about scale, not emotion itself.

“Earlier, scale often came with compromise,” she explains. “The bigger the canvas, the harder it was to protect emotional detail. AI shifts that balance.” According to Madhvani, AI scales imagination, not feeling. Intimacy, she says, still comes from lived experience, culture and memory.

Santanu Hazarika, a multidisciplinary visual artist, echoes this tension, pointing out that while AI has democratised access and expanded scale, it has also introduced a sense of homogeneity. With millions using the same tools and models, festive storytelling risks slipping into a shared, generic aesthetic, big on spectacle, thin on specificity.

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When Audiences Push Back

This festive season made one thing clear: audiences are increasingly able to spot when AI overwhelms intent, and they are not shy about reacting.

One of the most cited examples was McDonald’s Netherlands, which released a fully AI-generated Christmas film positioning the brand as a refuge from holiday chaos. Instead of landing as ironic or comforting, the ad was widely criticised online for being bleak, emotionally cold and visually uncanny. The backlash escalated quickly, prompting the brand to disable comments and eventually pull the ad down altogether.

Coca-Cola, a brand synonymous with human warmth and festive nostalgia, also found itself at the centre of criticism. Its AI-assisted ‘Holidays Are Coming’ campaign drew sharp reactions from viewers and creative communities alike, many of whom felt the visuals lacked the soul and craft of the brand’s iconic holiday storytelling. For a franchise built on emotional continuity, even partial AI substitution felt jarring to audiences.

This was not an isolated incident. Coca-Cola’s earlier AI-generated holiday films had already drawn criticism from artists and animators, who questioned the brand’s decision to lean on generative tools instead of human craftsmanship, turning the conversation from aesthetics to ethics and creative labour.

Outside traditional holiday advertising, similar reactions surfaced elsewhere. Paramount Pictures faced criticism for using AI-generated narration in a promotional video, with audiences likening the output to low-quality automated content. While not festive-specific, the backlash reflected a growing intolerance for AI artefacts that feel lazy or impersonal.

Adding to this, online petitions and social media movements calling on brands to “stop using AI in Christmas ads” gained traction, arguing that festive advertising carries cultural and emotional weight that automation should not override.

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Do audiences care if emotion is AI-assisted?

According to industry voices, audiences are less concerned about the presence of AI and more sensitive to intent.

“People can sense when an emotion is manufactured, whether it is AI-assisted or entirely human-made,” Madhvani explains. She points to international examples where brands were forced to withdraw festive ads because AI had taken over the creative process entirely, resulting in hollow storytelling.

Hazarika draws a key distinction between AI-assisted and fully AI-generated work. AI-assisted ads, where human direction remains central, tend to perform better. Fully AI-generated assets, he argues, often lack a clear creative intent, making them easier for audiences to disengage from.

“There’s still a stereotype attached to AI,” he notes. “Once something feels like it’s made by AI, people tend to skip it.”

Experimentation vs Sameness

Interestingly, AI has enabled both creative bravery and creative conservatism. On one hand, it lowers the cost of experimentation, allowing brands to explore multiple routes without escalating risk. On the other, when used purely to optimise what has worked before, it reinforces sameness.

“AI actually does both, depending on how a brand chooses to use it,” says Madhvani. Used thoughtfully, it can act as a rehearsal space. Used carelessly, it flattens originality.

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What Will Endure and What Won’t

As brands plan future festive campaigns, industry experts agree that AI-driven holiday advertising will succeed only when it stays grounded in human insight.

“If AI is used only for speed, volume or visual spectacle, it will feel disposable very quickly,” Madhvani says. “The work we remember will be the work where technology quietly served emotion, not the other way around.”

This festive season shows that audiences are increasingly discerning about AI in advertising, raising questions around authenticity, effort, and meaning. The key challenge for brands is using AI thoughtfully while maintaining a human touch.