Somehow, this AI-generated McDonald’s ad about hating Christmas was a flop

If you’re having a stressful holiday season, the answer is McDonald’s – at least that’s what a now-deleted AI-generated ad suggests, as reported Futurism.

Set to a song calling the holidays “the most terrible time of the year,” the ad shows AI-generated people experiencing a range of winter misfortunes, including family dinners, shopping, caroling, baking cookies and putting up a Christmas tree, each of which goes wrong in one way or another. The commercial ends by telling viewers to “hide out at McDonald’s until January here.”

However, unlike the Coca-Cola ad, the McDonald’s ad took the risk of including people rather than just drawing forest creatures. Most of the people in the commercial are not seen again and some shots are a bit fake, like the one showing a person falling while ice skating, only for their limbs to turn to jelly halfway through.

In a post on LinkedIn, The Gardening.club, the AI ​​division of The Sweetshop, the studio behind the ad, said it took them “an intense seven weeks” to create the ad. They even admitted that “the hours of work put into this film were more than a traditional production.”

Melanie Bridge, CEO of The Sweetshop, shared similar comments in an Instagram post, saying: “The hours put into this job far exceeded a traditional shoot. Ten people, five weeks, full time. Blood, sweat, tears and an honestly ridiculous amount of coaxing to get the models to behave and honor the creative brief, shot by shot.”