Filmmakers Behind Hideous AI-Generated McDonald’s Ad Insist ‘AI Didn’t Make It – We Made It’

Matt Growcoot
A young man in a patterned sweater sits between two lively older adults at a table, looking startled as they gesture energetically. Subtitles read, "Freaking chaos, it feels like a zoo.
The woman’s arm here is seemingly disintegrating.

McDonald’s released an AI-generated Christmas ad featuring morphed faces and mangled bodies, but the filmmakers behind it insist they “hardly slept” for seven weeks while adding, “AI didn’t make this film. We did.”

The 45-second ad — which has now been pulled — was made for McDonald’s Netherlands and titled: ‘It’s the most terrible time of the year.’ It plays on how the month of December and the run-up to Christmas can be quite stressful, naturally McDonald’s is a sanctuary.

It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill ad, except it was all AI-generated. The ad agency behind it, TBWA\NEBOKO, hired Los Angeles-based director duo MAMA, which consists of Mark Potoka and Matt Starr Spice. PetaPixel has now spoken to MAMA who say they have been misquoted adding that the quotes belong to Melanie Bridge, CEO and Partner of Sweetshop who runs The Gardening Club.

“Her and her team ended up finishing this project without our creative input. It’s unfortunate our names are being attached to it,” Starr Spicer says.

A person has fallen on an outdoor ice skating rink at night, surrounded by people skating and spectators. Trees and buildings are decorated with festive lights. Text on the image reads, "It's the most terrible time of the year.
The physics in the video often don’t make sense.
A crowded tram stops on a wet, snowy street. People with shopping bags cram inside, while a woman carrying gifts steps out. The scene is gloomy, and the caption reads, "It's the most terrible time of the year.
Don’t look too closely at the faces on the tram.

In a since-deleted post on the website Little Black Book, the filmmakers made a passionate defense of the project. Fortunately, 80LV reposted them.

“For seven weeks, we hardly slept, with up to 10 of our in-house AI and post specialists at The Gardening Club working in lockstep with the directors. Every shot travelled through a rigorously engineered toolchain: real Google Earth plates, advanced style-transfer, pixel-level photo repair, custom LoRAs, control nets, bespoke ComfyUI graphs, and thousands upon thousands of tightly steered iterations.

Then came compositing, lighting balance, physics corrections, artefact removal, and final finishing in Flame. We generated what felt like dailies – 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. And here’s the thing I wish more people understood: magic isn’t the technology. The magic is the team behind it, people who pushed, questioned, experimented, swore at broken models, solved impossible problems, and refused to stop until every frame felt cinematic.

I don’t see this spot as a novelty or a cute seasonal experiment. To me, it’s evidence of something much bigger: that when craft and technology meet with intention, they can create work that feels genuinely cinematic. So no – AI didn’t make this film. We did.”

The quote at the end, “AI didn’t make this film. We did,” has prompted scathing criticism, as has the insistence that the team went without sleep for the project.

“Our fingers hurt from typing prompts,” mocks one X user in a post that has received over 1.3 million views. “AI bros are some of the most unserious people on the planet.”

X user @jacksfilm also mocked them by pretending to be one of the team: “It’s a lot harder than people think! Prompts that my team used include: make it funny, make it epic AND funny, funnier!!!”

The backlash to an AI-generated McDonald’s ad was always going to be strong. Another major multinational corporation, Coca-Cola, also made an AI-generated Christmas ad this year, which also received much criticism.

Update 12/10: The ad has now been pulled and removed from platforms, including YouTube. Updated with comments from the directors, MAMA.

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