Melanie Bridge, CEO of The Sweet Shop, defended the ad after the video was made private on McDonald's Netherlands YouTube channel.
As quoted in Futurism, externalshe said that the production process took “seven weeks” and the team worked “with little sleep” to create “thousands of takes and shape them in editing, just as they would produce a high-quality production.”
“This was not an AI trick,” she said. “It was a movie.”
McDonald's Holland said in a statement to BBC News that the video was intended to “reflect the stressful moments that can occur during the holidays” but that it had decided to remove the ad.
“This moment is an important learning curve as we explore the effective use of AI,” the company said.
Where highly publicized Christmas campaigns typically take up to a year to be successful, companies are turning to companies that can create new video content using prompts from generative AI tools to produce films in much shorter time frames.
Coca-Cola appears to have succeeded in swaying at least some of the public with its second consecutive AI-generated Christmas ad.
The use of AI in the creation of this ad is controversial, but a report from analytics firm Social Sprout found that the ad had a 61% “positive sentiment rating.”, external From online commenters.
But several other companies, including Italian luxury fashion brand Valentino, have come under fire for using the technique in their campaigns, with critics calling Valentino's ads “cheap” and “lazy.”
BBC News has contacted The Sweetshop and TBWA\Neboko for comment.
