McDonald’s recently faced a wave of criticism after an AI-generated Christmas advertisement was pulled from circulation.

The fast-food giant’s holiday ad was met with ridicule online, with many viewers describing it as ‘creepy’ and ‘lacking soul.’

In a swift 45-second montage, the commercial presented a series of scenes, each lasting just two or three seconds.

Accompanying the visuals was a rendition of the classic carol ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,’ altered to ‘it’s the most terrible time of the year,’ while AI-created people and families experienced various mishaps.

Customer backlash was significant enough that the ad’s comment section was disabled, and McDonald’s operations in the Netherlands decided to discontinue the campaign altogether.

One X user said: ‘The song is poorly written, almost certainly written by AI because it doesn’t fit the original rhythm at all, and at the end it just makes up a passage.’

They added that the visuals were also ‘pointless’ since it was just ‘random nonsense like most AI videos.’

‘It’s hard to recall a more soulless and ingenuine piece of work than this,’ the user said.

The Christmas ad – which was released by McDonald’s Netherlands – was blasted by social media users and later removed from the internet. Each scene in the 45–second holiday campaign only lasted for about two or three seconds

Film studio The Sweetshop’s AI division, called The Gardening Club, produced the AI ad over seven weeks

The ad was commissioned by the agency TBWA and produced by the AI division of The Sweetshop film studio, known as The Gardening Club. 

A page celebrating The Gardening Club’s ‘AI Christmas magic’ has been removed from The Sweetshop’s website. 

Melanie Bridge, The Sweetshop’s CEO, offered an impassioned defense of their work on social media.

She said that people did not appreciate how ‘the hours that went into this job far exceeded’ a typical commercial shoot.

Bridge wrote on LinkedIn: ‘Blood, sweat, tears, and an honestly ridiculous amount of coaxing to get the models to behave and to honour the creative brief shot by shot.’

But her response was also mocked by social media users.

‘In their attempt to prove they worked hard, they’ve instead shown AI is hard to control, still expensive, and uglier,’ another X user said. ‘What’s the point again?’

Others were more blunt with their pushback.

The Christmas ad featured AI-created humans, which the campaign makers said had been ‘selected and shaped’

‘Dude, you just typed random words on a keyboard and called it a day,’ a third user said.

The studio responsible for the AI ad said it spent seven weeks building the campaign and ‘refining every single frame.’

Some scenes had more than ten specialists dedicated to achieving a ‘film that feels real’ despite it being fully artificial.

‘The man–hours poured into this film were more than a traditional production,’ the studio posted.

The production company touted how it had intentionally ‘selected and shaped each AI performer’ and customized their respective looks, energy and supposed ’emotional presence.’

‘It was craft,’ Bridge said. ‘Just using different tools.’

A ‘countless amount of takes’ were apparently required to complete the finished product – but that did not matter to critics.

Melanie Bridge, the CEO of The Sweetshop film studio, said ‘blood, sweat, tears’ had gone into the AI project

One customer weighed in and asked: ‘All those billions, but couldn’t be bothered hiring a proper staff for a proper ad?’

The ad was met with distaste even beyond its AI elements.

One user called the campaign a ‘massive fail’ because of its negative Christmas-themed messaging.

‘I hate it because it diminishes a beautiful, holy, sacred moment in time to burnt cookies, decorating mishaps, and annoying relatives,’ he wrote.

The Daily Mail has reached out to McDonald’s corporate offices in the US and the Netherlands, as well as to The Gardening Club, for comment.