McDonald’s pulls AI-generated Christmas ad following backlash

McDonald's Netherlands took down its latest AI-generated Christmas ad after facing widespread backlash from netizens. The 45-second ad film, titled ‘It's the Most Terrible Time of the Year’, was uploaded to their YouTube channel on December 6, depicting AI-generated characters struggling through holiday mishaps while buying gifts, decorating their homes, and even baking cookies before turning to McDonald's outlets to finally have a 'happy' meal.

The advertisement featured a darkly humorous take on the festive season, showing a rapid succession of Christmas disasters. The scenes included presents being knocked off a car by a low bridge, carol singers having their sheet music blown away, and even Santa Claus' sled getting stuck in traffic. Other unsettling moments depicted people suffering injuries while ice skating and dangling from rooftops while hanging Christmas lights. The ad concluded by advising customers to escape the festive chaos and "hide out in McDonald's till January's here."

Viewers immediately called the video blatant 'AI Slop', and the backlash intensified rapidly on social media platforms. The criticism wasn't limited to the AI-generated visuals; many found the commercial's cynical tone fundamentally misguided. One X user noted that most people enjoy Christmas and "nobody wants negative vibes," questioning why a brand would choose to center its holiday campaign around negativity.

The visual quality drew particular scorn, with the ad described as being full of grotesque characters, horrible colour grading, and hackneyed AI approximations of basic physics. The rapidly-changing scenes created what some viewers called a "visual seizure." McDonald's initially disabled comments on the video before eventually delisting it entirely from YouTube just three days after its release on December 9.

The McDonald's controversy follows strikingly similar criticism that Coca-Cola faced with its own AI-generated Christmas campaigns. In November 2024, Coca-Cola released an AI-remake of its beloved 1995 "Holidays Are Coming" commercial, which originally featured iconic red trucks traveling through snowy landscapes. The new version, created by three AI studios using multiple generative AI models, attempted to recapture that nostalgic magic but instead was widely condemned as "soulless" and "devoid of any actual creativity."

Despite the uproar, Coca-Cola doubled down on its AI strategy. This marks the second year in a row that the brand's AI-driven creativity has backfired, with the 2024 commercial heavily criticized for producing uncanny visuals and awkwardly animated faces. In 2025, the company released yet another AI-generated version featuring only animated animals instead of people.

The disconnect between Coca-Cola's confidence and public reception highlights a broader tension in advertising. The backlash underscores how audiences expect warmth, authenticity, and human connection during emotionally significant occasions; qualities that current AI technology struggles to deliver, no matter how technically sophisticated it becomes.

Adding another layer to the controversy, creative agency All Trades Co. released a satirical AI-generated response video that repurposed one of the characters from McDonald's ad. The grandmotherly character removes a burger from a Burger King bag and explains, "With AI actors, it's different. I don't really exist, so I could be programmed to say anything." Inc The character then criticizes the McDonald's commercial as "an overstimulating mess" before morphing into a burger eaten by rats.