“Brands scrambled to integrate AI into their marketing in 2025, and soon learned the hard way that ‘cutting-edge’ does not necessarily mean ‘effective advertising,’” said the magazine’s editor. “As morphing trucks and rogue ‘smart’ grandmas popped up in the most inopportune places, it’s clear that the year of AI advertising dreams meets reality had finally arrived.”
The statistics speak for themselves. In a survey of more than 6,000 US consumers in November, a tracking brand tool called Tracksuit determined that only 18% of them had a positive response to AI-generated ads.
The negative response was even more telling: 39% of surveyees did not like what they saw. The remaining 36% landed somewhere in between.
“While AI is super at the buying and placement side of advertising, the creative side of automation is much tougher to crack,” advises Matt Barash, the commercial officer at ad tech company Nova.
“When brands use AI to create stories from scratch, they don’t get innovation. What they get is the essence of human emotion, and the end result could make headlines for the wrong reasons altogether.”
McDonald’s Pulls AI Ad After Backlash
McDonald’s in the Netherlands was trying to be clever with an advertising commercial they developed using artificial intelligence. They called it “the most terrible time of the year,” and in this commercial, they portrayed a series of holiday mishaps in quick succession and used the commercial to promote McDonald’s as a haven from all the holiday problems with the catchy phrase “Hide out in McDonald’s ’til January’s here.”
The social media crowd was not amused. Critics condemned this fast food chain as a “McGrinch,” disdaining their unrelated, very disturbing.
In a reversal of sorts, McDonald’s took this commercial down from YouTube, having first turned comments off, then issued a statement specifying that many of their consumers actually found this time of year “the most wonderful time of the year.”
How Coca-Cola’s AI Experiment Risks Brand Heritage?
Even as they drew flak for the “dystopian” and “soulless” AI advertisement they put out in 2024 in celebration of the holidays, Coca-Cola decided to make it two AI advertisements in one year by putting out not one but three different ones in 2025.
Among these is one that is only recognizable as an adaptation of ‘Holidays Are Coming’ as it has one of those catchy Borat-esque moments where the viewer’s eyes catch something that is just not right.
“The advertising company responsible for this commercial has defended it with this justification: ‘The advertisement has been tested with consumers, and it received the highest score for long-term brand potential.’ However, it is precisely because of these inconsistencies in AI that even the most cherished forms of branding imagery could be jeopardized.”
True Classic’s Ad Campaign Hijacked by Meta’s Artificial Intelligence
True Classic, a completely digital fashion brand, had a surprise that it didn’t want when Meta’s advertising platform began automatically swapping out its most successful ad, which starred a millennial man wearing a fleece set, with an image of a clearly AI-generated smiling granny sitting in an armchair.
Advertisers said that sometimes the Advantage+ AI-powered advertising tools from Meta created creative material without clear permission, while some stated that the platform defaulted certain options to “on” despite them having manually disabled them.
Meta said that advertisers using its image-creation service have the option to check the images before running their adverts, but the harm had already been caused to the trust of the advertisers.
H&M and Guess Face Backlash Over AI Digital Twins
This plan by H&M to develop “digital twins” of 30 real-life models drew an instant backlash. While the company claimed that the models would retain the right to their digital likenesses, concerns arose regarding workers’ rights and job displacement of makeup artists and hairstylists among others.
An American fashion influencer named Morgan Riddle deemed the move to be “shameful,” and Sara Ziff, of Model Alliance, stated that the policy caused “serious concerns for consent and pay” within the fashion industry, which was already under struggle supporting the rights of employees.
The Vogue/Guess Controversy and the 30% Slump in Artificial Intelligence Influencer Deals
The dispute further escalated with the August issue of Vogue 2025, which included advertising from Guess involving AI-created models named “Vivienne” and “Anastasia.”
It seems that the controversies have had a bearing on this. Brand collaborations for AI-powered social media accounts have fallen by roughly 30% for the first eight months of this year when compared to the same period last year, stated Collabstr, a platform for influencer marketing.
Brands are now capitalizing on this anger to market themselves as “anti-AI”, a rather quick shift in sentiment. Certain brands are taking it a step further and marketing themselves as “anti-AI”.
For these brands, and as they deal with all of the power of this new and evolving technology, the takeaway is clear: “AI may be the future, but authenticity, consistency, and ‘the hand of man’ are still what advertising is all about.”
