Technologies

AI Slop for Christmas: Why McDonald’s and Coca-Cola’s AI Holiday Ads Missed the Mark

Commentary: Two billion-dollar companies using AI for holiday ads isn’t giving me that holly jolly feeling.

I am completely exhausted by huge corporations like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola choosing to rely so heavily on AI for their holiday ads. McDonald’s made $25.9 billion in revenue in 2024, and Coca-Cola made $47.1 billion. Do these companies expect us to be OK with AI slop garbage when they could’ve spent a tiny fraction of that to hire a real animator or videographer?

In case you haven’t been inundated with these AI commercials, I’ll back up a bit. Both McDonald’s and Coca-Cola have launched holiday-themed commercials that are undeniably made with AI — each bragged about its use of AI, which they have probably come to regret. They’re very different, showing the full range of what’s possible with AI in advertising. But the backlash against both proves we don’t have the appetite for AI slop.

McDonald’s commercial features a series of holiday-themed mishaps, set to a parody of the song It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, about how it’s actually the most terrible time of the year. The commercial is only 30 seconds long and intended only for the Netherlands, but it has already garnered so much hate online that the company removed the video from its pages. The marketing agency behind the spot, The Sweetshop Film, still has the video up on its website.

The McDonald’s ad is very clearly AI, with short clips stitched together with a bunch of hard jump cuts. The text isn’t nearly legible, fine details are off and it just has that AI look I’ve come to quickly recognize as an AI reporter. In a now-deleted social media post, the marketing agency’s CEO talked about how it used various AI tools to create it. By contrast, the Coca-Cola commercial is a little more put-together. A Coca-Cola truck drives through a wintry landscape and into a snowy town, and forest animals awaken to follow the truck and its soda bottle contents to a lit Christmas tree in a town square. But even this video has clearly AI-generated elements.

While disappointed, I wasn’t surprised when I saw the ad and the resulting backlash. There has been a surge in creative generative AI tools, especially in the past year, with numerous AI tools built specifically for marketers. They promise to help create content, automate workflows and analyze data. A huge proportion (94%) of marketers have a dedicated AI budget, and three-quarters of them expect that budget to grow, according to Canva’s 2025 Marketing and AI report. That’s partly why we’ve seen a massive increase of AI-generated content in our social media feeds. It’s no wonder Merriam-Webster selected ‘slop’ as its word of the year.

McDonald’s and Coca-Cola’s feel-good, festive commercials manage to hit upon every single controversial issue in AI, which is why they’re inspiring such strong reactions from viewers. AI content is becoming — has already become — normalized. We can’t escape chatbots online and AI slop in our feeds. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola’s use of AI is yet another sign that companies are plowing ahead with AI without truly considering how we’ll react. Like advertisements, AI is inescapable.

If AI in advertising is here to stay, it’s worth breaking down how it’s used and where we, as media consumers, don’t want to see it used.

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Spotting the AI in Coca-Cola’s ad

McDonald’s now-removed ad was clearly AI, with its plastic-y people and jerky motions. Its format, a series of short clips stitched together with hard jump cuts, is another telltale sign since most AI video generators can only generate clips up to 10 or so seconds long. Coca-Cola’s ad was a little different, but the AI use was just as obvious.

The Holidays Are Coming ad is a remake of Coca-Cola’s popular 1995 ad. In a behind-the-scenes video, Coca-Cola breaks down how it was created. It’s obvious where AI was used to create the animals. But I’m not sure I believe the company went “pixel by pixel” to create its fuzzy friends.

Coca-Cola’s AI animals don’t look realistic; they look like AI. Their fur has some detail, but those finer elements aren’t as defined as they could be. They also aren’t consistent across the animal’s body. You can see the fur gets less detailed further back on the animal. That kind of detailed work is something AI video generators struggle with, but it’s something a (human) animator likely would’ve caught and corrected.

The animals make overexaggerated surprised faces when the truck drives past them, their mouths forming perfect circles. That’s another sign of AI. You can see in the behind-the-scenes video that someone clicks through different AI variations of a sea lion’s nose, which is a common feature of AI programs. There’s also a glimpse of a feature that looks an awful lot like Photoshop’s generative fill. Google’s Veo video generator was definitely used at least once.

The company has been all-in on AI for a while, starting with a 2023 partnership with OpenAI. Even Coca-Cola’s advertising agency, Publicis Group, bragged about snatching Coca-Cola’s business with an AI-first strategy. It seems clear that the company won’t be swayed by its customers’ aversion to AI. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

All I want for Christmas is AI labels

There is exactly one thing Coca-Cola got right, and that’s the AI disclosure at the beginning of the video. It’s one thing to use AI in your content creation; it’s entirely another to lie about it. Labels are one of the best tools we have to help everyone who encounters a piece of content decipher whether it’s real or AI. Many social media apps let you simply toggle a setting before you post.

It’s so easy to be clear, yet so many brands and creators don’t disclose their AI use because they’re afraid of getting hate for it. If you don’t want to get hate for using AI, don’t use it! But letting people sit and debate about whether you did or didn’t is a waste of everyone’s time. The fact that AI-generated content is becoming indistinguishable from real photos and videos is exactly why we need to be clear when it’s used.

It’s our collective responsibility as a society to be transparent with how we’re using AI. Social media platforms try to flag AI-generated content, but those systems aren’t perfect. We should appreciate that Coca-Cola didn’t lie to us about this AI-generated content. It’s a very, very low bar, but many others don’t pass it. (I’m looking at you, Mariah Carey and Sephora. Did you use AI? Just tell us.)

AI in advertising

In June, Vogue readers were incensed when the US magazine ran a Guess ad featuring an AI-generated model. Models at the time spoke out about how AI was making it harder to get work on campaigns. Eagle-eyed fans caught J.Crew using “AI photography” a month later. Toys R Us made headlines last year when it ran a weird ad with an AI giraffe, though it did share that it was made with an early version of OpenAI’s Sora.

Something that really stung about the use of AI by Guess and J.Crew is how obvious it was that AI was used in place of real models and photographers. While Coca-Cola and Toys R Us’s use of AI was equally clear, the AI animals didn’t hit quite the same. As the Toys R Us president put it, “We weren’t going to hire a giraffe.” Points for honesty?

Even so, it’s more than likely that real humans lost out on jobs in the creation of these AI ads. Both commercials could’ve been created, and probably improved, if they had used animators, designers and illustrators. Job loss due to AI worries Americans, and people working in creative industries are certainly at risk. It’s not because AI image and video generators are ready to wholly replace workers. It’s because, for businesses, AI’s allure of cutting-edge efficiency offers executives an easy rationale. It’s exactly what just happened at Amazon as it laid off thousands of workers.

It’s easy to look at Coca-Cola’s and McDonald’s AI holiday ads and brush them off as another tone-deaf corporate blunder, especially when there are so many other things to worry about. But in our strange new AI reality, it’s important to highlight the quiet moments that normalize this consequential, controversial technology just as much as the breakthrough moments.

So this holiday season, I think I’ll drink a Pepsi-owned Poppi cranberry fizz soda instead of a Coke Zero.

Technologies

Trump Maintains US‑Iran Negotiations Continue Amid Tehran’s Denials of Duplicity

President Trump insists that US‑Iran talks are ongoing despite Tehran’s denial of any negotiation plans, while warning that only a deal or total surrender will allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Conflicting statements from both sides have heightened uncertainty as the conflict enters its sixth month.

On Monday, President Donald Trump asserted that negotiations between the United States and Iran are still taking place, even after Tehran stated it has no intention of engaging in direct talks with Washington.

In a fiery Truth Social post, Trump labeled Iran’s leaders “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming they are lying about ongoing peace talks “whether Iran wants to admit it or not.” He repeated his assertion that the United States completely controls the Strait of Hormuz, despite maritime traffic through the crucial route lingering at only a small fraction of pre‑conflict levels.

He wrote, “Nothing reaches Iran unless we allow it, and nothing will pass unless a deal—or total surrender—is achieved.”

Earlier that day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters there is no imminent plan for U.S.–Iran negotiations, contradicting Trump’s earlier comment that talks would resume Monday afternoon. Baghaei added that Iran’s only current discussions are with Oman concerning the Strait of Hormuz.

The conflicting statements have heightened uncertainty over the peace‑talk process and the broader conflict, now in its sixth month.

Trump’s assertion about new negotiations came a day after he said on Truth Social that he had agreed to cancel a massive strike against Iran “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.” He said in the same post that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked him to hold off on that attack because “the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

Trump has claimed dozens of times throughout the more‑than‑five‑month‑long war that a deal is at hand. No permanent deal has been signed, and a temporary ceasefire reached in June has fallen apart.

Trump has also repeatedly threatened to launch devastating strikes against Iran before backing off. After the latest example, oil prices on Monday fell and stocks surged.

BMI, a research unit of Fitch Solutions, said in a note Monday that a broader diplomatic understanding on reopening the Strait of Hormuz is still achievable this quarter, while raising the probability of its escalation scenario to 35% from 25%, citing mounting military, diplomatic and economic signs of rising U.S.-Iran tensions.

“Diplomatic progress is likely to be punctuated by periodic military flare-ups, while miscalculation by either side could trigger a renewed escalation,” BMI analysts wrote in a note. The firm said the key issue to watch is the future governance of the strait, as the Iran-Oman talks — potentially backed by Gulf states, China and the U.S. — point to efforts to build a post-conflict shipping framework.

Shipping risks persist even as diplomacy appears to be advancing. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre said it received a report of an incident 20 nautical miles (23 miles) northeast of Khasab, Oman — at the mouth of the strait — with a tanker’s master reporting an explosion in close proximity to the vessel at about 20:37 UTC Sunday (4:37 pm ET). The vessel and crew were safe and authorities are investigating, UKMTO said, advising ships to transit with caution.

The proposal Trump announced over the weekend calls for the U.S. and Iran to return to negotiations and continue ironing out some of the thorny issues that had derailed diplomatic efforts, according to The Associated Press, citing a regional official involved in the mediation efforts.

The official said the proposal also includes a reopening of the Hormuz Strait and halting attacks across the region, including by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq on the Arab Gulf countries and Jordan.

The U.S., for its part, will end its naval blockade on Iran and allow Tehran to export its oil, the official said, adding that no deal has been reached, although the mediation efforts remained underway.

Trump’s weekend reversal has lowered the temperature after days of escalating attacks across the Gulf. Kuwait said Saturday that Iranian forces launched a wave of drones within its airspace, with its military destroying multiple aircraft after Iran targeted critical infrastructure in the country’s north.

A parallel track with Muscat is also advancing. Iranian diplomats said Tehran was close to reaching a new arrangement with Oman to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a deal critical to preventing the war from escalating further, according to the Financial Times.

Iranian officials said negotiations over future management of the Hormuz Strait with Oman, which sits on the opposite shore of the waterway, are in their final stages. The agreed shipping route would be different from those used before, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Baghaei, adding that the new route was separate from the issue of the strait’s reopening or continued closure.

Technologies

Oil Prices Slide as Trump Halts Planned Iran Strike

Oil prices dropped after Trump cancelled a planned strike on Iran, with WTI down about 5% and Brent near 5% lower. He said the move followed requests from Tehran and regional allies for a pause while a deal shaping the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program is negotiated.

Oil prices fell on Monday after President Donald Trump announced he had cancelled a planned strike on Iran. WTI futures dropped roughly 5% to $80.34 a barrel, while Brent slipped about 4.7% to $83.77 a barrel.

Trump said early Sunday he called off the strike after Iran and several Middle Eastern nations asked him to hold off, noting that the outlines of a deal had been agreed upon. He added that the prospective accord would entail the immediate, full opening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, according to his Truth Social post.

The president had been considering another round of strikes as diplomatic hopes waned since the conflict began on February 28. He said the U.S. and Iran would meet for talks on Monday, but Iran denied any scheduled negotiations with Washington, citing PressTV. Iran’s foreign‑ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei clarified that Tehran was only discussing shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz with Oman. In a follow‑up Truth Social message, Trump insisted that, regardless of Iran’s acknowledgment, the United States is indeed discussing a solution to a long‑standing problem created by Iran.

Technologies

Oil Prices Drop as Trump Cancels Planned Attack on Iran

Oil prices fell sharply after President Trump announced the cancellation of a planned strike on Iran, citing a new deal that would open the Hormuz Strait and end Iran’s nuclear threat.

Oil prices fell sharply on Monday after President Donald Trump announced that he had called off a planned strike on Iran.

West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, slipped roughly 5% to close at $80.34 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international benchmark, declined 4.7% to settle at $83.77 a barrel.

Trump made the announcement early Sunday, saying he had canceled the strike following requests from Tehran and other Middle Eastern countries.

In a Truth Social post, he wrote: “We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

The president indicated that the proposed agreement would include the immediate, complete, and total opening of the Hormuz Strait, as well as an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.

Trump had been weighing additional strikes amid diminishing prospects for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict that began on Feb. 28. He stated that the U.S. and Iran would hold negotiations on Monday.

Tehran denied that talks were planned with Washington, according to state news outlet PressTV.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was only holding talks with Oman regarding the routes ships can use through the Strait of Hormuz.

In a subsequent Truth Social post, Trump added that whether “Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking of a solution to a problem that they have caused for decades.”