Advertising
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When AI entered advertising and tested the limits of human connection
As brands rushed to adopt generative AI in 2025, several high-profile campaigns revealed that audience backlash was driven less by technology itself and more by how visibly it replaced human judgment.
This image is AI generated
Generative artificial intelligence moved from the margins to the mainstream of advertising in 2025. Brands adopted the technology to accelerate production, expand scale, and experiment with new visual possibilities. But several high-profile campaigns and marketing initiatives showed that audience acceptance was far from guaranteed.
Across sectors, backlash followed not because AI was used, but because many viewers felt something essential was missing.
One of the clearest examples came from McDonald’s Netherlands. In early December, the brand released a fully AI-generated Christmas film built around exaggerated festive mishaps. While positioned as humorous, the ad drew widespread criticism online for its uncanny animation and emotionally flat characters. Within days, McDonald’s withdrew the campaign, later describing it publicly as a learning experience. Viewer responses focused less on the presence of AI itself and more on how the film made them feel. Comments frequently described it as unsettling rather than entertaining.
Coca-Cola faced a similar response during the same holiday season. Its 2025 Christmas campaign used generative AI to reinterpret the brand’s iconic truck imagery. The execution featured morphing visuals and digitally rendered characters, produced at scale using AI tools. While the company highlighted the efficiency of the process, audience reaction centred on the perceived loss of warmth that had defined the campaign for decades. Social media reactions and industry commentary repeatedly contrasted the 2025 version with Coca-Cola’s earlier holiday ads, which were praised for emotional resonance rather than technical novelty.
In fashion, the debate took a different form. H&M’s announcement that it would experiment with AI-generated digital twins of models for use in social and marketing content prompted strong reactions from labour groups and creatives in 2025. The brand framed the initiative as an exploratory tool, but critics raised concerns about authenticity and the long-term impact on creative employment. The Model Alliance described the move as a potential threat to real work, while others questioned whether synthetic representations could sustain consumer trust in a category built on human expression.
India had already encountered a related issue earlier. Zomato’s decision to ban AI-generated food images from restaurant menus, introduced in 2024 after customer complaints, continued to be referenced through 2025 as an example of how AI visuals can undermine credibility. Customers had reported that AI-styled dishes looked significantly different from what was delivered. The company cited authenticity and trust as the reason for the ban, reinforcing the idea that visual realism remains critical in commerce.
Beyond advertising, audience resistance to AI-generated content appeared in adjacent brand environments as well. Amazon rolled back AI-generated episode recaps and anime dubs on Prime Video in 2025 following viewer complaints about inaccuracies and tonal flatness. While not marketing campaigns, these rollbacks offered a parallel lesson for brands. When AI-produced content enters spaces where audiences expect craft and care, tolerance for errors and emotional disconnect is low.
Similarly, PepsiCo faced scrutiny after announcing AI-driven tools for sales and operations, with critics raising concerns about energy use and sustainability. Though unrelated to creative output, the response illustrated how AI adoption itself can attract reputational attention when it appears misaligned with broader brand values.
Taken together, these episodes point to a consistent pattern. The most intense criticism was directed not at the presence of AI, but at how extensively and visibly it replaced human judgment in moments that traditionally rely on emotional connection. In advertising categories built on nostalgia, appetite, or identity, audiences appear particularly sensitive to signals that creativity has been automated rather than guided.
For marketers, the lesson from 2025 is not that AI should be avoided, but that its role needs careful calibration. Brands that positioned AI as a background tool tended to face less resistance than those that foregrounded it in emotionally charged storytelling.
As generative tools become more sophisticated in 2026, the challenge for CMOs will be less about access to technology and more about deciding where it belongs and where it does not. The year’s backlash suggests that audiences continue to value signs of human intention, especially when brands are speaking in moments that ask for trust.
In advertising, scale may be automated. Connection, it appears, still is not.
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