Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Why McDonald's Deleted Its AI Ad and the Defense of It

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Why McDonald's Deleted Its AI Ad and the Defense of It · Elon Musk Podcast

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  Would help. The show tremendously.
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  Thank you so much. McDonald's in Netherlands
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  released a Christmas ad made entirely.
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  With generative AI. And the Internet completely
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  ripped it apart so fast that the company pulled it within days.
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  Now this 45 second spot was titled the most terrible time of
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  the year and featured AI generated people suffering
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  through holiday disasters. Now that made me want to see
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  where this was going. Comments were disabled on the
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  YouTube channel before the video was eventually delisted.
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  Now the production company issued A defensive statement,
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  then deleted that one too. So what went wrong that
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  McDonald's had to scrub the ad, the defense and any trace of
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  confidence from this entire campaign?
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  The ad was created by Dutch agency called TBWA Nibocco and
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  AUS production company called The Sweet Shop and 1 executive
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  claimed 10 people spent seven weeks sleepless weeks making it.
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  Now we're going to go through what the ad actually showed, why
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  the backlash was so intense and what McDonald's said when they
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  pulled the plug and we'll get right into that right after this
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  short break. Now McDonald's Neverland,
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  Netherlands tried to make a Christmas ad using.
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  Gen. AI.
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  The concept was dark humor about holiday stress.
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  Family's presents fly off a car roof when they hit a low bridge.
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  Carol singers lose their sheet music to the wind.
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  Santa gets stuck in traffic. A man slips on ice and breaks
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  some bones. A woman's coat gets caught in a
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  tram door and she gets dragged away.
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  Now picture AI generated faces cycling through scenes so fast
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  you can barely register what's happening before the next
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  disaster arrives. Now generative AI video has a
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  problem with continuity. The technology loses coherence
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  after a few seconds, so creators cut rapidly between short clips
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  to hide the glitches. The pacing has become a.
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  Tell of. AI generated video, the
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  McDonald's ad leaned into it and the result looked like what 1
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  critic called a visual seizure. The faces were off, the physics
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  didn't make sense. The AI generated characters
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  moved through scenes with the uncanny valley problem where
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  everyone looks almost human but also looks creepy and almost not
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  quite right, and the backlash hit immediately.
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  One user on X said the commercial single handedly
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  ruined by Christmas spirit. Film critic Richard Roper wrote
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  that if McDonald's was going for creepy, depressing, deeply
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  unfunny, clumsily shot, poorly edited and inauthentic, they
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  completely nailed it. And conservative commentator
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  Matt Walsh called it awful and said there was no artistry, no
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  wit, no charm, no warmth, no humanity.
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  Another user said McDonald's should be ashamed for releasing
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  that slop. The word slop kept coming up.
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  It's become shorthand for AI generated content that feels
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  cheap and completely soulless. McDonald's disabled the comments
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  on YouTube. Then they made the video
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  completely private. Somebody could see it.
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  Then they issued a statement explaining the decision.
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  They said the ad was intended to reflect the stressful moments
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  that can occur during the holidays in the.
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  Netherlands, but. Acknowledged that for many of
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  our guests, the season is the most wonderful time of the year.
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  They called the incident an important learning as we explore
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  the effective use of AI. So corporate right now.
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  to hit subscribe. Or follow.
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  Thank you for that. OK, now keep going with me here.
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  The production company tried to defend the work before deleting
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  that defense. Melanie Bridge, CEO of The Sweet
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  Shop, which I talked about earlier, posted a statement
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  saying the ad took seven weeks, with up to 10 AI specialists
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  working full time. They said that they generated
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  thousands of takes and shaped them in the edit, just as we
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  would on any high craft production.
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  Seeing, she insisted this was not an AI trick, it was a film.
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  She wrote that when craft and technology meet with intention,
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  they can create work that feels genuinely cinematic.
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  And that statement is now unavailable.
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  But here's another wrinkle. The director is credited on the
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  project. A duo called Mama Mama told
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  Petapixel they were misquoted. They said the quotes belong to
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  Melanie Bridge and her team. The project was finished without
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  our creative input. They said it was unfortunate
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  their names were being attached to it.
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  So even the people credited with directing the ad are distancing
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  themselves from it now. McDonald's corporate was careful
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  about how they frame the mess. In this statement, they
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  specifically said the commercial was produced for McDonald's
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  Netherlands and asked reporters to reference the brand as
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  McDonald's Netherlands in their coverage.
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  Now that's damage control, and the parent company wants
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  distance from the Netherlands division.
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  Whether that means the US headquarters approved the
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  experiment or not is unclear, but the instance on naming the
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  Netherlands branch suggests someone wants a firewall between
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  global McDonald's and this backlash.
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  Now the broader question is whether consumers will
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  eventually accept AI generated ads or whether the backlash will
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  hold up now. Some people think that companies
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  are trickling out AI content to normalize it over time.
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  Others think the uncanny valley problem will keep audiences
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  rejecting this kind of work until the technology improves
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  dramatically. McDonald's learned something
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  from this experiment, even if the lesson is just that people
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  hate watching glitchy AI faces try to sell them burgers during
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  the holidays. And whether that changes
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  anything at the corporate level is a different question.
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  The ad's completely gone. Nobody can see it.
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  The defense is gone, nobody can read it.
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  The only thing left is the phrase important, learning and a
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  lot of. Screenshots.
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