McDonald’s Netherlands Dropped an AI Holiday Ad, and People Aren’t Lovin’ It

For most people, Christmas is quite literally the most wonderful time of the year. No matter what you might be going through or feeling, the twinkling lights on houses, the festive music playing in stores, and the decorated Christmas tree standing in your living room are usually enough to soften the hardships you might be facing.

But McDonald’s in the Netherlands decided to put a spin on this notion by taking Andy Williams’s classic “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and rewriting it as “It’s the Most Terrible Time of the Year” in its latest ad.

The ad, which is AI-generated, highlights the less-than-magical realities of the holidays: crowded stores, long lines, and unbearable traffic. And honestly, people aren’t loving it. But the backlash isn’t really about the message itself. Here’s the controversy behind it.

While McDonald’s was busy using its new holiday ad to spotlight what makes Christmas time (at least in the Netherlands) the “most terrible time of the year,” and then suggesting a trip to McDonald’s could magically fix it, people were dragging the company for creating its entire commercial using AI.

That’s right, the McDonald’s Netherlands ad was created entirely using artificial intelligence, with different prompts and clips strategically put together and meant to make everything look as realistic as possible. But has McDonald’s learned nothing from the backlash other brands have faced when they tried to push AI-generated ads?

While the company likely thought it would receive credit for at least getting the “people” in the video to match the prompts, unlike other AI clips where characters’ voices don’t align or random objects appear, instead, it got the opposite reaction.

McDonald’s now finds itself in the middle of a controversy because, while advertising and marketing company Social Samosa praised the ad in an Instagram post, saying it proves “that AI didn’t replace the craft, it required more of it,” that claim doesn’t exactly hold up.

The agency says McDonald’s used ten specialists and “thousands of prompts” to pull the commercial together. And while yes, those ten specialists had jobs, if the ad had been filmed with real people, the production would have created several more opportunities for actors, background extras, directors, editors, designers, stylists, prop masters, camera operators, and plenty more roles that are typically required to undertake a commercial like this.

So the overall consensus from people is that McDonald’s didn’t bring jobs to the table by creating an AI ad for its Netherlands locations to show the “real” feelings people have during the holidays (as if we really needed the reminder). Instead, it took more away.

People are obviously pretty upset about McDonald’s Netherlands using AI for its holiday ad, especially since it basically took meaningful jobs off the table. But they also find the whole thing a bit disheartening. X (formerly Twitter) user @ArtofSpongebob wrote, “The message of this ad is ‘the holidays suck,’ and its solution is to spend as much time in McDonald’s as possible. Forget your friends and family … Have a Big Mac.”

The company is also getting mocked for its creators allegedly saying how hard the ad was to make. X user @jacksfilms joked that some of the prompts the team used included “Make it funny,” “Make it epic AND funny,” and “Funnier!!!”

Needless to say, McDonald’s has certainly gotten itself into a pickle here, not only for being a bit of a holiday Debbie Downer but also for reducing roles and putting less money into people’s pockets.