McDonald’s took down its recent Christmas ad produced for the Netherlands after receiving widespread criticism and mockery for its use of generative artificial intelligence.
“It’s hard to recall a more soulless and ingenuine piece of work than this,” one user on X wrote.
The 45-second ad opens with the sung line, “it’s the most terrible time of the year,” a parody of Andy Williams’s “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” Christmas jingle, before delving into a rapid montage of AI-generated clips of people struggling amid holiday chaos.
The ad concludes with an AI-generated man walking into a McDonald’s as “so you flee from the madness, the lights and the cheer, and hide out in McDonald’s till January’s here,” is sung in the background.
“Not even considering the ai slop, the messaging of the ad is literally ‘fuck christmas, fuck your family, eat mcdonald’s instead,’ one X user criticized.
