ALBAWABA - McDonald's recently faced backlash after dropping its new AI Christmas ad across several platforms due to its messaging and uncanny visuals.
The fast food giant is facing more backlash than Coca-Cola, which was also blasted on social media for its most recent AI-generated Christmas ad. According to several reports, the video was taken down on YouTube and is no longer available to watch.
McDonald's Netherlands' ad referred to Christmas as "the most terrible time of the year," showing AI-generated humans having a terrible time with their families during the holidays. The ad then states that the chaos would only be bearable if the viewer made a trip to their nearest McDonald's.
McDonald's AI Christmas ad faces backlash, gets taken down from YouTube
After receiving overwhelmingly negative reactions from people who've seen it, TBWA\Neboko, the agency that created the ad (specifically The Sweetshop), released a statement saying that its team spent seven sleepless weeks creating it.
The statement outlined, "For seven weeks, we hardly slept, with up to 10 of our in-house AI and post specialists at The Gardening Club working in lockstep with the directors."
It added, "This wasn't an AI trick. It was a film. And here's the thing I wish more people understood: magic isn’t the technology. The magic is the team behind it, people who pushed, questioned, experimented, swore at broken models, solved impossible problems, and refused to stop until every frame felt cinematic."
The Sweetshop stated further, "AI didn't make this film. We did."
