Today’s installment of AI Sucks is brought to us by McDonald’s Netherlands. On Saturday, the Dutch happy mealers posted a holiday ad on their YouTube channel that was composed entirely of AI-generated clips and bore the central theme, “It’s the most terrible time of the year.” People tuning into this YouTube channel (a demographic I need much more info on) lambasted both the use of AI as well as the quality of the ad itself. One viewer was moved enough to comment that the 45-seconds constituted “the most god-awful ad I’ve seen this year.” So by Tuesday, McDonald’s Netherlands took down the video. But don’t worry — since the internet is forever, you can still catch this stinker in all its disglory. Meanwhile, Dutch McD’s is spinning the snafu as a “learning” experience. Please let it be that they’ve learned… not to use AI.
The advert was created for McDonald’s by Dutch Company TBWA\Neboko and US production company The Sweetshop.
Adverts which include generative AI have become a growing trend among major brands, such as Coca-Cola, particularly for the Christmas season.
The McDonald’s advert depicted things that can go wrong during the Christmas break, using the slogan “the most terrible time of the year”, and suggesting the time was better spent in the company of the fast food giant.
Following its release, viewers criticised the film’s uncanny-looking characters and large number of stitched together clips, calling it “creepy” and “poorly edited”.
As clips made using generative AI are more likely to distort the longer they run for — most clips made using the process tend to be roughly six to 10 seconds long — even a 45-second advert would likely consist of many videos edited together.
The video also provoked concerns for job displacement in the industry, with one Instagram comment noting: “No actors, no camera team..welcome to the future of filmmaking. And it sucks.”
Following the video being made private on the McDonald’s Netherlands YouTube channel, The Sweetshop’s chief executive Melanie Bridge defended the advert.
As quoted in Futurism, she said the production process took “seven weeks” where the team “hardly slept” and created “thousands of takes — then shaped them in the edit just as we would on any high-craft production”.
“This wasn’t an AI trick,” she said. “It was a film.”
In a statement to BBC News, McDonald’s Netherlands said the video was meant to “reflect the stressful moments that can occur during the holidays” but had decided to remove the advert.
“This moment serves as an important learning as we explore the effective use of AI,” it said.
Where normally a high-publicity Christmas campaign could take up to a year to pull off, companies have begun to look to firms which can produce films in a much shorter time span, using prompts from generative AI tools to create new video content.
I think it’s important that we the horrified viewing public continue to call out not only the use of AI, but the fact that the content is legitimately bad. Even if all the elements had been filled out by actual humans — actors, cameramen, etc — it’s still a crappy commercial! Same goes for Coca-Cola’s cloying Xmas ad this year, where the prompt for AI had to be “packs of cute wide-eyed animals watch red Coca-Cola trucks go by, Santa’s face shows up on a billboard near the end.” Though to give Coke a teeny tiny bit of credit, they did at least acknowledge the ad was made using AI (in a teeny tiny credit for a second at the beginning), whereas I didn’t see any such disclaimer on the McDonald’s and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Holiday ad. Also, the AI exec boasting that they spent seven sleepless weeks working on that thing… is not the flex she thinks it is. But they shouldn’t take my word; instead I suggest that those responsible for the ad throw it in the toilet and let the not-fully-encrypted AI poop cam break down what went wrong for them. That seems more fitting.
McDonald's unveiled what has to be the most god-awful ad I've seen this year – worse than Coca-Cola's.
Fully AI-generated, that's one. Looks repulsive, that's two. More cynical about Christmas than the Grinch, that's three.
I don't wanna be the only one suffering, take a look: pic.twitter.com/lRYODLkkBJ
— Theodore McKenzie (@realTedMcKenzie) December 6, 2025
Imagine bragging about abusing your employees for this absolute garbage?
I have yet to meet someone who likes AI who isn’t a talentless hack and a bad boss.
Wait, that’s friggin awesome though? AI aside, it completely turns the tables on the US approach to turning consumerism into a religion. What actual point in that ad isn’t accurate?
I laughed! If it was with real people (and not AI) it would be thumbs up from me. A little break from all the saccharine of the season.
IDK to me it felt violent like this was HAL the evil supercomputer’s sadistic fantasy of what happens to the meat sacks during the holidays. Also were the vocals also genAI? Those were torture all on their own. Glad to see the humans pushing back against the corporations we don’t want this sh*t.
It moved too quickly for me to spot the AI, but I agree with Noo – it felt frantic and yes, almost violent in a way that wasn’t amusing. Very disjointed with no comic timing. It needed to show fewer disasters and tell a coherent story.
It’s a terrible ad. But the cat toppling the tree was pretty funny.
Huh? But their solution to consumerism is… more consumerism, just at McDonald’s instead of the mall. “Do our consumerism instead, come be comforted by greasy generic meals and sugary coffee, alone” is hardly a wholesome message for humanity during the holidays, has our bar gotten that low?
Well right it is an ad for a brand that promotes homogenization of global cultures, but I like the message of hiding out till January sipping coffee. Just not in brightly colored plastic chairs.
For once, a win for real people!
Thank goodness I’m not a teacher or anyone who needs to be savvy about such things, because I really didn’t think that was that obviously fake, I thought it was kind of funny. Because it’s true, this time of year is really stressful and all of those things were pretty much possible.
Re AI in particular, I don’t understand why it’s viewed as this thing that will make or save so much money. It seems that the cost of the data centers and the power they use are high, and a drain on energy.
I will say that I like to use chatgpt as a way to search for things and it’s pretty helpful, and I asked it to draw me a cat-inspired picture of a sandworm from dune, but cute, and I love what it gave me, it is super-cute
Just don’t rely on it for accuracy. Even that google CEO says that!
It just skims actual writing and then makes stuff up based on it. I avoid it all. I’m not going to train their stupid bots for them.
oh yeah for sure! it gives a good start though