McDonald’s Drops a Strange AI Christmas Ad and It Is Not Going Over Well

McDonald’s rolled out a new AI generated Christmas ad and the reaction has been a mix of confusion and disbelief.

The studio behind it insists the project took weeks of sleepless nights as they wrote prompts and refined every single frame to prove one thing. “AI did not make this film. They did.”

Seeing the finished ad makes you question how it ever made it through approval. It is hard to believe it is real. The whole thing plays like a holiday card from the uncanny valley as the mood spirals into something cold and distant.

The theme apparently leans into the idea that Christmas sucks and that is not subtle. McDonald’s reportedly wanted the opposite of warm and sentimental. They wanted “slush, grit, and bleakness.”

Judging by the result, the creatives must have worn the AI down through sheer persistence until it finally produced a December that felt properly miserable. It’s something we might see in a distopian society.

It is a strange milestone for AI in advertising and a reminder that tools are only as good as the direction behind them. As more companies push into AI powered campaigns, this McDonald’s experiment is a preview of what the next era of advertising may look like and why audiences are going to keep debating whether these projects capture creativity or just mimic it.