The fast-food giant has removed a controversial Dutch holiday campaign after viewers branded the AI-generated video “demonic” and “creepy,” sparking a fresh debate over the use of artificial intelligence in advertising.
McDonald’s Netherlands quietly yanked its fully AI-generated Christmas ad from YouTube after getting absolutely hammered by criticism. People called the video “soulless” and “repulsive.” The 45-second commercial, titled it’s the Most Terrible Time of the Year, was supposed to be a funny take on holiday stress, but it backfired so badly that the company disabled comments before eventually making the whole thing private.
The ad dropped on December 6 and showed a bunch of festive disasters: exploding trees, burnt cookies, Santa stuck in traffic. The message was basically “hide out in McDonald’s” to escape the chaos. But viewers weren’t having it. They were creeped out by the weird visuals, which had all the typical AI problems like distorted faces, movements that defy physics, and limbs that looked like jelly.
Social media tore it apart. On X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit, thousands of comments called the ad “demonic” and a “visual seizure.” A lot of people were upset that the brand was basically mocking family gatherings while using technology that, as critics put it, strips all the “warmth” out of Christmas.
McDonald’s issued a brief statement saying the experience was an “important learning” moment about using AI in marketing. They’ve moved away from the campaign now, though clips are still making the rounds online.
“If they were going for creepy, depressing, deeply unfunny, clumsily shot, poorly edited, and inauthentic nailed it!” one annoyed viewer wrote on X.
The production team tried to defend their work. “AI didn’t make this film. We did,” said Melanie Bridge, CEO of production house The Sweetshop. She claimed the project took “seven weeks of sleepless nights” and intense human curation, adding that the team’s “fingers hurt from typing prompts.” That defense got mocked pretty hard online, with people joking about comparing typing prompts to the actual manual labour of traditional filmmaking.
This is the second big PR disaster involving AI holiday ads this season. Coca-Cola got hit with similar backlash for using AI to remake its iconic “Holidays Are Coming” truck commercial. Like McDonald’s, Coke faced heat for replacing human actors and artists with generative AI to cut costs.
The whole thing highlights a growing divide. Corporate marketing teams are rushing to embrace AI because it’s fast and cheap, but consumers are increasingly hostile toward what they see as “low-effort” or “dystopian” content, especially during emotional times like Christmas.
Marketing experts think this “learning moment” might force big brands to pump the brakes on their push into generative video. With people turning sharply against “AI slop,” companies might have to go back to human-led creative work to avoid trashing their brand reputation even more.
Leave a comment