McDonald’s Netherlands recently found itself at the center of a public relations storm after releasing a Christmas advertisement created entirely with artificial intelligence. The 45-second spot, which went live on December 6, was removed just three days later following intense criticism from viewers who called it everything from “creepy” to “the most god-awful ad I’ve seen this year”.
The incident offers a revealing case study in the challenges companies face when deploying AI for creative work. Hassan Taher, a Los Angeles-based artificial intelligence consultant and founder of Taher AI Solutions, has spent years analyzing how businesses integrate AI technologies. His perspective on this advertising misstep highlights both the technical limitations of current AI tools and the human factors that determine whether such projects succeed or fail.
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Technical Constraints Behind the Backlash
The McDonald’s advertisement attempted to depict holiday mishaps using the tagline “the most terrible time of the year,” positioning the fast-food chain as a refuge from seasonal stress. But viewers immediately noticed something off about the execution. Characters appeared distorted, and the numerous clips felt disjointed rather than cohesive.
These problems stem from fundamental limitations in how generative AI creates video content. Current AI models struggle to maintain visual consistency across longer sequences, which is why most AI-generated clips run between six and 10 seconds. A 45-second advertisement would require stitching together multiple segments, each produced separately—a process that often results in jarring transitions and inconsistent imagery.
Hassan Taher has written extensively about the importance of understanding AI’s capabilities before deploying it in high-stakes contexts. “Users are more likely to trust AI in well-defined, low-risk environments where the technology has a proven track record,” he has noted. The McDonald’s case demonstrates what happens when organizations push AI beyond those well-defined boundaries—the technology simply wasn’t ready to deliver the smooth, polished result that viewers expect from a major brand’s holiday campaign.
The Production Defense and Its Limitations
After McDonald’s pulled the advertisement, Melanie Bridge, chief executive of The Sweetshop, the production company behind the spot, defended the work. She told Futurism that the team spent seven weeks on the project, “hardly slept,” and created “thousands of takes” before shaping them in post-production. “This wasn’t an AI trick,” she said. “It was a film”.
Bridge’s comments reveal a disconnect between how production teams view their AI-assisted work and how audiences perceive the final product. The labor-intensive process she described—countless iterations, minimal rest, extensive editing—mirrors traditional filmmaking workflows. Yet the output failed to meet viewer expectations, suggesting that effort alone cannot compensate for AI’s current technical shortcomings in video generation.
Taher’s work on AI implementation emphasizes the gap between what developers intend and what users experience. The production team may have invested significant time refining AI outputs, but audiences judged the advertisement based on what they saw on screen, not the process that created it. This disconnect underscores a broader challenge in AI deployment: organizations must consider how their work will be received, not just how much effort went into producing it.
Broader Industry Patterns
McDonald’s is far from alone in experimenting with AI-generated advertising. Coca-Cola has released two consecutive AI-created Christmas campaigns, with the most recent receiving a 61% positive sentiment rating according to Social Sprout analytics. That mixed reception suggests audiences remain divided on whether AI belongs in high-profile creative work.
Other brands have faced harsher criticism. The Italian fashion house Valentino drew complaints after using AI in a campaign, with critics calling the result “cheap” and “lazy”. These reactions point to a pattern: viewers can often tell when AI has been used, and many perceive AI-generated content as inferior to traditionally produced material.
Hassan Taher has addressed this perception issue in his consulting work with Taher AI Solutions, where he advises organizations on AI strategy across sectors including finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. His approach centers on identifying contexts where AI adds genuine value rather than simply reducing production costs or timelines. The McDonald’s case illustrates what happens when companies prioritize speed and efficiency over quality and audience expectations.
What McDonald’s Netherlands Learned
After removing the advertisement, McDonald’s Netherlands released a statement acknowledging that the video was meant to “reflect the stressful moments that can occur during the holidays,” but that the company had decided to pull it anyway. “This moment serves as an important learning as we explore the effective use of AI,” the statement read.
That careful language suggests the company views this incident as a stumble rather than a complete failure of strategy. McDonald’s appears committed to continuing AI experimentation, albeit with greater attention to execution and audience response. The question remains whether future attempts will address the technical limitations that undermined this campaign.
Hassan Taher’s framework for evaluating AI implementations emphasizes three factors: accuracy, transparency, and context. The McDonald’s advertisement struggled on all three dimensions. The technical execution lacked the accuracy viewers expect from professional advertising. The company’s initial silence about using AI raised transparency concerns. And the context—a high-profile Christmas campaign from a global brand—demanded a level of polish that current AI video tools cannot consistently deliver.
Implications for Future AI Advertising
The McDonald’s case offers lessons for other companies considering AI-generated creative work. Speed and cost savings matter less than whether the final product meets audience expectations and brand standards. AI tools may reduce production timelines from months to weeks, but that efficiency gains value only if the output resonates with viewers.
Companies must also weigh the reputational risks of AI-generated content against potential benefits. The backlash McDonald’s faced demonstrates that audiences notice AI’s fingerprints on creative work and often judge those efforts harshly. Brands betting on AI to produce compelling campaigns should proceed with caution, ensuring they have tested outputs thoroughly before public release.
The removal of McDonald’s AI-generated Christmas advertisement reflects broader tensions around artificial intelligence in creative industries. Technical limitations, audience expectations, and employment concerns all contributed to the campaign’s failure. Organizations exploring similar projects would do well to study this case, recognizing that AI’s potential must be balanced against its current constraints and the human factors that ultimately determine whether creative work succeeds or fails.