By Nilesh Christopher, Los Angeles Times

People aren’t lovin’ it.

McDonald’s was forced to pull down an AI-generated Christmas commercial from YouTube after some consumers said the AI-slop-filled tongue-in-cheek take on the holidays was distasteful.

Related Articles

Oreo is bringing zero-sugar cookies to the US

First of 30 oil lease sales planned for Gulf of Mexico draws $279 million in bids from companies

What the Federal Reserve rate cut means for you

Fed Cuts Interest Rates Again, in Highly Contentious Decision

Holiday spending shows effects of an uneven economy

The ad, titled “It’s the most terrible time of the year,” was a satirical take on holiday realities. It showed a series of short, chaotic clips of people braving the winter, tripping while carrying overloaded gift bags, getting stuck in tangled lights, burning homemade cookies or starting an unexpected cooking fire during a family gathering.

The ad agency TBWANEBOKO collaborated with film production company Sweetshop, whose Los Angeles-based directing duo Mark Potoka and Matt Spicer shot the film. The 45-second ad was created for McDonald’s Netherlands.

It ends with a call to ditch the madness and hide out in McDonald’s till January. The ad, meant to spread cheer, irked viewers.

“Even without all the ai slop this ad feels incredibly odd,” said one comment on the commercial posted on YouTube. “Ditch your family and hide in mcdonalds because christmas sucks???”

Some said the ad was a sloppy move by one of the world’s largest advertisers.

“The McDonald’s ad emphasizes all that is negative about the holiday season, and the suggestion that McDonald’s is a respite from such negative experiences is not credible,” said David Stewart, emeritus professor of marketing at Loyola Marymount University. “It is likely that a very unhappy human came up with the idea of denigrating the holiday experience, even if AI was used to create part of the ad.”

After the McDonald’s backlash, the Sweetshop said it used AI as a tool for the commercial but a lot of human effort went into it as well.

“We generated what felt like dailies — thousands of takes — then shaped them in the edit just as we would on any high-craft production,” the company said in a statement. “This wasn’t an AI trick. It was a film.”

McDonald didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mainstream brands are gradually embracing AI-generated ads. Last month, Coca-Cola released a holiday ad in which a Coca-Cola truck drives through snow and forests, awakening animals and lighting up trees, then pulls up to a town square.

This is the second year in a row Coca-Cola has dropped an AI holiday ad despite widespread artist pushback.

“AI is gaining traction for the creation of ads because it is viewed as a way to save costs,” Stewart said.

More brands, including Google, Toys R Us and Under Armour, have produced synthetic ads. Proponents of AI ads see them as a change from traditional advertising.

“Whether we like the ad itself, McDonald’s is making a statement with this campaign: AI has changed the playbook. As one of the largest consumer brands on the planet, McDonald’s is reading the tea leaves of what’s to come for brand marketing and is aggressively indexing its brand for the new generative decision funnel,” said Justin Inman, chief executive of Emberos, a platform that monitors how brands appear inside major AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

AI-powered search could influence $750 billion in revenue by 2028, and half of consumers now use chatbots to discover brands, according to McKinsey & Co.

Such an association with AI may even boost McDonald’s visibility inside chatbots, surfacing its brand name ahead of others.

“Love it or hate it, expect to see more of it,” Inman said. “McDonald’s getting thousands of people to prompt McDonald’s + AI will greatly benefit their overall brand visibility.”

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By DAVID BAUDER

The New York Times, attacked by President Donald Trump for reporting about his physical condition, said on Wednesday that it wouldn’t be deterred by “false and inflammatory language” that distorts the role of a free press.

Related Articles

Scores of government statisticians are gone, leaving data at risk, report says

What a Democrat’s victory in the Miami mayoral election may mean for Trump

FDA investigating possible adult deaths from COVID vaccines

Trump’s ‘gold card’ program goes live, offering US visas starting at $1 million per person

Trump administration adds militarized zone in California along southern US border

The president had posted on his Truth Social platform that he believed it was “seditious, perhaps even treasonous” for the Times and other media outlets to do “FAKE” reports on his health.

“They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it,” Trump wrote.

The 79-year-old president wouldn’t specify, but the newspaper has posted a handful of reports about his health in recent weeks. In a Nov. 25 story headlined “Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office,” reporters examined Trump’s public and travel schedules to conclude Americans were seeing less of him than they were used to.

A story on Dec. 2, accompanied by a video, said that Trump “appeared to be fighting sleep” during a Cabinet meeting that day.

Trump says he hasn’t slowed down

Columnist Frank Bruni discussed these reports in a Dec. 8 opinion piece headlined “Trump’s Approval Ratings Have Declined. So Has His Vigor.” Bruni wrote that Americans “might want to brace ourselves for some presidential deja vu. He’s starting to give President Joe Biden vibes.” Biden, who was in his early 80s, dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House after a disastrous debate with Trump that raised doubts about the then-incumbent’s fitness for office.

Trump, in his post, said he was history’s hardest-working president with a lengthy list of accomplishments. He said he went out of his way to do “long, thorough and very boring” medical examinations, including three cognitive tests that he “ACED.”

“The New York Times, and some others, like to pretend that I am ‘slowing up,’ and maybe not as sharp as I once was, or am in poor physical health, knowing that it is not true,” the Republican president said.

The health of American presidents has long been a delicate and sometimes thorny issue between the White House and the press that covers it — from Grover Cleveland’s secret tumor surgery to Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s polio to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s heart attack. Trump has frequently critiqued the cognitive fitness of his predecessor, Biden.

Trump has fought back against some reports

Trump already has a $15 billion defamation lawsuit pending against the Times. In the suit, filed in September, Trump targeted four Times journalists about three articles that discussed his finances. He has also been involved in legal cases involving The Associated Press and CBS News, among others.

Nicole Taylor, a spokeswoman for The New York Times, said the outlet’s reporting on Trump’s health is heavily sourced, based on interviews with people close to the president and with medical experts.

“Americans deserve in-depth reporting and regular updates about the health of the leaders they elect,” Taylor said. “Mr. Trump welcomed our reporting on the age and fitness of his predecessors; we’re applying the same journalistic scrutiny to his vitality.”

Taylor said that “we won’t be deterred by false and inflammatory language that distorts the role of a free press.”

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A parent of a Kentucky State University student has been charged with murder in an on campus shooting that killed one student and critically injured another.

Related Articles

Oreo is bringing zero-sugar cookies to the US

San Francisco woman gives birth in a Waymo self-driving taxi

West Virginia National Guard member killed in DC shooting is laid to rest

Botulism outbreak sickens more than 50 babies and expands to all ByHeart products

NASA loses contact with its Maven spacecraft orbiting Mars for the past decade

Jacob Lee Bard was at the school’s campus in Frankfort on Tuesday and fired shots at the victims at a residence hall, police said in a statement.

Investigators said the shooting was isolated, but they have not publicly shared details of the circumstances or a possible motive. The shooting killed 19-year-old De’Jon Fox of Indianapolis. A second student who was shot remains in critical condition, but his name has not been released, police said.

Bard, 48, was booked into jail on murder and first-degree assault charges. Police said Bard is from Evansville, Indiana, which is about 150 miles (241 kilometers) west of Frankfort.

Bard is being represented by a public defender at the Franklin County Department of Public Advocacy, which declined to talk about his case Wednesday.

University police officers were near the scene of the altercation that ended with the shooting and immediately arrested Bard, police said.

Investigators have watched video taken by others at the scene and surveillance footage.

Asked by reporters about alleged videos showing a fight involving Bard’s sons preceded the shooting or whether Bard might have come to campus to talk to administrators about his sons’ safety, Frankfort Assistant Police Chief Scott Tracy refused to say what may have led to the shooting.

“It’s really too early in the investigation right now to really give any details that led up to it. A lot of it would be speculation,” Tracy said Wednesday.

The shooting happened at Whitney M. Young Jr. Hall. It was the second shooting in four months near the student residence.

Someone fired multiple shots from a vehicle on Aug. 17, striking two people that the university said weren’t students. Frankfort police said one victim was treated for minor injuries and a second sustained serious injuries. The dorm and at least one vehicle were damaged by gunfire.

University President Koffi C. Akakpo said the school brought in more police officers after the first shooting and will evaluate whether more needs to be done to keep students safe once the investigation into the latest shooting is complete,

“The campus is a safe place,” Akakpo said at the news conference.

Kentucky State is a public historically Black university with about 2,200 students. Lawmakers authorized the school’s creation in 1886.

The school sits about 2 miles east of the Capitol building in Frankfort.

A 55-year-old woman was fatally shot at a Maplewood apartment complex Wednesday morning by a suspect who then shot and wounded himself, police said.

Officers about 10:45 a.m. were called to a report of gunshots and someone lying on the ground at Pondview Apartments in the 2500 block of Ivy Avenue, north of Maryland Avenue and west of Century Avenue.

The woman was found in a hallway with gunshot wounds and taken to Regions Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Officers learned the suspect, a 56-year-old man, was possibly inside the woman’s apartment and armed.

A perimeter was set up, and neighboring apartment units were evacuated. A shelter-in-place order was issued.

The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team responded and made entry into the apartment, where they found the man with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. His condition was not released by police.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is assisting Maplewood police in the investigation.

Related Articles

20-year sentence for New Richmond man, 71, who strangled wife after ‘things got out of hand’

About 400 immigrant children were detained longer than the recommended limit, ICE admits

Honduras seeks arrest of ex-President Hernández after Trump pardon

Man fatally shot in St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen ID’d as 49-year-old

Justice Department can unseal Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking case records, judge says