The recent McDonald's advertisement, now withdrawn, went viral because of its perceived negative representation of the holiday season. The fast-food chain deployed generative AI, in collaboration with Sweetshop Films, to create the advertisement. A McDonald's Netherlands special, the ad portrayed Christmas as a potentially challenging time of year, showing AI-generated visuals of chaos and mayhem. The ad ultimately showed McDonald's as a safe haven until January, a comfortable space where people can find warmth along with its food.
The ad follows Coca-Cola's Christmas release, which too faced backlash for its AI-generated visuals, showing the whole city, primarily animals, lighting up as Coca-Cola trucks pass by. Unlike McDonald's, Coca-Cola provided a disclaimer for AI usage, which many other companies fail to do, fearing criticism.
As brands increasingly deploy generative AI, the campaign raises a larger question of whether algorithmically produced emotion can retain authenticity without misleading consumers. It boils down to a debate over whether emotion is being experienced or engineered.
Brand and advertiser perceptions also differ, which further complicates the use of AI as a creative force. As Sweetshop CEO Melanie Bridge stated in a deleted LinkedIn post about the McDonald's ad, "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, it was a film." According to McDonald's Netherlands, the ad intended to reflect stressful moments that can occur during the holidays.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind
It is an accurate statement in today's AI-dominated world. A central concern in AI-generated advertising is synthetic authenticity: a wonderfully crafted presentation of moments that feel real but never actually occurred. Here, faces could be composites, settings are digitally rendered, and emotional expressions are statistically generated.
Raising concerns of emotional misrepresentation, the line between storytelling and emotional manipulation becomes increasingly blurred. The adoption of AI tools also impacts creative labour. While traditional advertising relies on directors, set designers, and actors, AI-generated content reduces dependency on these roles, triggering concerns within creative industries about displacement and concentration of creative control in the hands of tech-enabled corporations.
In both advertisements, the sleek minimalism of the campaign has been cited as emblematic of a broader trend where efficiency is prioritised over human craftsmanship.
AI advertising currently operates in a regulatory vacuum and a legal grey area, where existing consumer protection and advertising laws focus only on false claims about products, not the process by which emotional persuasion is created.
Two phenomena that could be propagated by this are the normalisation of opaque persuasion under the guise of innovation, and synthetic nostalgia with memories that feel collective but were never collectively lived. The cultural significance of both brands is a testament to this.
AI can be craftily used to meet our requirements, especially for advertising. In the words of Roshni Das, Former VP, Global Marketing Innovation, Intel, "Are you a product that naturally has AI as part of your core, like Samsung has with the Galaxy, or like Intel has their processing chip, or are you a brand or a platform where you can infuse AI to create stickiness, or you've got nothing intrinsic like chocolate...where you can use interesting storytelling to create stickiness and make the brand stand out for you." This level of AI integration and application highlights the adaptive capacities of AI, be it hyper-personalisation, predictive analytics, programmatic advertising, and ad performance optimisation, or dynamic content generation.
AI advertising is not without its fair share of problems. An analysis of 133 AI systems by the Berkeley Haas Centre for Equity, Gender and Leadership found that, across industries, 44 per cent showed gender bias, and 25 per cent exposed both gender and racial bias. There is also a lack of humanity. Advertising is most impactful when it makes a human connection and produces authentic, inclusive portrayals. GenAI-created depictions of human beings often lack real human attributes, which erodes the principle of caveat emptor, authentic representation in the work, and consumer trust in the brand.
Unemployment and job displacement concerns also follow. Vogue faced a wave of criticism after its US edition featured a Guess advertisement created using an AI-generated model. The move prompted models to speak out, arguing that the increasing reliance on AI was already reducing their chances of being hired. This was evident at Amazon as well, where thousands of jobs were cut in the name of efficiency and technological progress.
AI-human bhai-bhai?
According to the AdNext report released by ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India), a study conducted by Salesforce found that 66 per cent of marketers believe human oversight is essential for successfully integrating generative AI into advertising.
In the absence of clear communication, audiences can find it difficult to tell genuine content apart from AI-created material, breeding doubt and mistrust. Although openness is essential, brands must ensure that disclosures are thoughtful and relevant, rather than so frequent or generic that they lose impact. Tailored, context-appropriate transparency will be critical to preserving consumer confidence without inundating people with excessive or redundant information. By leading in AI literacy, brands become trusted guides, building consumer confidence without creating undue regulations or stifling innovation.
In today's AI landscape, the challenge is to balance technological advancement with human creativity. While AI and generative tools excel at analyzing data and spotting patterns, they still lack the emotional depth, cultural sensitivity, and intuition that make marketing truly connect. The most effective approach is to combine AI's precision with human creativity and empathy at the core.
Cadbury Celebrations' #MyBirthdaySong re-imagined the traditional birthday wish by offering hyper-personalised songs, representing an ideal example. Using a GenAI-powered platform, users could generate customised birthday songs in real-time by simply entering a few details, creating a unique and emotionally resonant experience.
As India navigates emerging AI policy, this controversy underscores the urgency of regulatory frameworks that protect consumer trust without stifling innovation.
Indian law applicability in this specific realm is a grey area, where even near provisions for regulation or remedy are suggestive, not enforcing. Related statutes would include the Information Technology Act, 2000; Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021; MeitY Advisories (on AI and intermediaries); Consumer Protection Act, 2019; Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) Code for Self-Regulation; ASCI Guidelines; Copyright Act, 1957; Trade Marks Act, 1999; and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
It’s tempting to dismiss Coca-Cola’s and McDonald’s AI-driven holiday ads as yet another out-of-touch corporate misstep, particularly amid far more pressing global concerns. Yet, in this increasingly AI-shaped world, it’s just as crucial to pay attention to the subtle, everyday uses that quietly legitimise a powerful and contested technology as it is to focus on its headline-grabbing innovations.