The rise of AI doesn’t come as a surprise – it’s efficient, cheap, and easy for big corporations to use. Jobs are being lost due to AI, and in recent times many companies have been using generative AI to create commercials. Not only is it bad for the environment and hardworking people who make a living in advertising, it’s haphazardly thrown together. Many AI ads were used in the Super Bowl, but some are also being used in everyday commercials.
Coca-Cola “Holidays are Coming” Ad
During the holiday season, Coca-Cola decided to make a seasonal commercial using AI. In former years CGI or real actors would have been used, but that requires money, time, and real-world collaboration – all things that AI eliminates.
While the commercial is visually appealing with good lighting and has emotional appeal with the adorable AI generated animals, there are significant inconsistencies throughout the commercial. The Coca-Cola truck in the advertisement appears several times, but has different characteristics through each cut due to the massive amount of different AI clips stitched together. The ad used approximately 70,000 separate AI clips, and likely hundreds of thousands more were generated to find the “perfect” fit for the commercial.
The inconsistencies include the front license plate on the Coca-Cola truck disappearing and reappearing throughout, each time with different lettering that is a common indicator of AI use. A good strategy to find out if a piece of media is AI is to check lettering on signs, as AI struggles to generate letters properly. Similarly to the license plate, when the truck enters a town around the 43 second mark, there is nobody in sight on the streets, but in the next scene – after cutting to a clip of puppies, of course, people are lining the streets to see the truck. The inconsistencies should be the least of Coke’s concerns, as a much bigger issue lies with the job loss and poor water quality created by AI and public knowledge that Coke is in support of it.
McDonald’s Netherlands “The Most Terrible Time of the Year” Ad
Following suit with Coca Cola, McDonald’s released an advertisement specifically for the Netherlands on social media during the holidays. With a pessimistic tone, “The Most Terrible Time of the Year” ad features holiday chaos and offers McDonald’s as an escape from the turmoil. The ad wasn’t received well by the public for the negativity during the holiday season as well as the fact that AI was used for the entire production of the commercial.
Not only was the commercial out of touch, but it was also completely unremarkable. There were no features that would have justified using AI – it’s never justified, but some are more reasonable than others – and human labor could have been used for the entirety of the advertisement. It features people getting into holiday related accidents, but it’s nothing special. They’re all relatively stereotypical holiday movie accidents: Christmas lights causing power outages, traffic jams, family drama, cats knocking over trees and burnt cookies. Every feature of this advertisement has been seen in one movie or another, which leaves no excuse to AI generate a commercial that was entirely possible.
McDonald’s removed the ad from social media following the backlash, but not before others had downloaded the video and re-uploaded it to platforms like YouTube and X. While the company may have saved money by producing the ad with AI and eliminating human creativity and expertise, was it truly worth the repercussions? McDonald’s has now lost out on money, time, reputation and an entire advertisement that they had to scrap which could have been avoided if widely controversial AI wasn’t used for the production.
Burger King’s AI response to McDonald’s Netherlands Ad
Burger King created a rebuttal ad to profit off of McDonald’s downfall following the release of their Netherlands ad. Featuring an AI actor used in the McDonald’s commercial, Burger King’s AI response took a critical standpoint on the topic of AI, discussing how real actors are more beneficial than AI ones.
The ad begins with the AI actor discussing how real actors used to have contract buyouts – meaning that they couldn’t act in competitor’s commercials. The irony of this is the fact that this AI actor was used in the McDonald’s commercial, but is discussing contract buyouts while munching on a Burger King burger. The camera slowly pans out, and other fast food restaurant take-out bags are seen on the table in front of the actor.
The AI actor continues by criticizing the McDonald’s commercial, calling it an “overstimulating mess filled with unsettling character designs” and blames the creators for the use of AI making the advertisement unrealistic. It also says that all of the McDonald’s burgers in the Netherlands are made from rats, and ends her criticism by saying that a real actor would have had to be paid to say everything she did. The commercial ends with a sentiment about valuing human creativity and labor.
Overall I believe that this commercial is the lesser of the three evils, because it still uses AI. It was clever and ironic that they used the same AI actor that was used in the McDonald’s Netherlands commercial, but AI shouldn’t have been used anyway. If Burger King would practice what they preached in their commercial and used a human actor, it would have been significantly more beneficial and impactful than using AI in the same way McDonald’s did.
AI is used everywhere. Work, school, and now officially media. AI was created as a tool to help people do the mundane, everyday tasks that consume time to allow human relationships and innovation to thrive. When AI is incorporated into media, it takes away from the idea that art imitates life, because it is then created artificially. AI generated media lacks soul, creativity and depth that are staples of human created media. When I think of Super Bowl commercials, I think of the creativity used in the 2000s and 2010s that made Super Bowl commercials compete for attention and develop humor, not the AI slop seen in the 2026 Super Bowl. Human passions are what drive creativity, and the use of AI hinders that.
