🎧 The Friday Download: Creepy Ads, Rogue Reports, and AI With Zero Chill: The Week Algorithms Got Awkward (December 12, 2025)

This week on The Friday Download, Dr. JR, Doctor of AI, dives into the stranger corners of recent AI news—where cutting-edge technology meets human emotion, institutional trust, and the occasional corporate faceplant.

We begin with a holiday marketing experiment that didn’t quite land. McDonald’s Netherlands released an AI-generated Christmas advertisement that was quickly described by viewers as “creepy,” “soulless,” and emotionally off-key. While technically impressive, the ad highlighted a recurring issue with generative AI: it can replicate the shape of human sentiment without fully understanding its substance. Holiday advertising relies heavily on nostalgia, warmth, and shared cultural memory—areas where probabilistic models often stumble. The backlash was swift enough that the company pulled the ad,  ...