According to Forbes, McDonald’s recently pulled an AI-generated Christmas advertisement after it sparked significant public outrage, becoming a key example of a growing “AI backlash.” This sentiment is being fueled by major corporations like Coca-Cola and Google heavily investing in generative AI. Critics point to a massive spending gap, with tech companies forecast to spend around $400 billion on AI infrastructure in the coming year, while U.S. consumers are only expected to spend $12 billion on AI services. This has led to fears of an economic bubble. Simultaneously, artists and authors are engaged in numerous lawsuits against AI companies over copyright and training data, and the environmental cost is rising, with one study suggesting AI’s energy demand could add up to $37 per month to residential bills. The core complaint is that AI is becoming a net-negative, devaluing human creativity and causing more problems than it solves.
Creativity, Cash, and Circular Logic
So what’s really going on here? The McDonald’s ad is a perfect symbol. It’s not just that it was kinda creepy or poorly made. It’s that it represents a direct shift of budget from human creatives to an algorithm. That’s a tangible, personal threat that people get immediately. But the financial angle is even wilder. When you see that circular investment deals between big tech firms are inflating the numbers, it starts to feel like a house of cards. Spending $400B to chase $12B in consumer revenue? That math doesn’t work unless you’re betting on a future so huge it justifies any present-day burn. It smells exactly like the dot-com bubble, where the “potential” outweighed the actual product-market fit.
The Unpaid Training Data Problem
Here’s the thing that really sticks in the craw for creators: the “we didn’t use AI” defense. The ad agency said, “AI didn’t make it, we did.” But that’s almost irrelevant. The foundational models were almost certainly trained on mountains of copyrighted work—art, writing, music—without permission or payment. That’s the heart of all those lawsuits. So human creatives face a double whammy: fewer future commissions *and* no compensation for their past work that’s now embedded in the AI’s code. It’s a raw deal, and it’s why the backlash isn’t just technophobic fear; it’s an economic grievance.
Hallucinations and Hyperbole
And let’s be honest, AI still kinda sucks at being reliably smart. The hallucination problem is a fundamental technical flaw. It makes up facts with confidence. This isn’t a minor bug; it’s a core limitation of how these large language models work. So when we’re told AI will revolutionize law, medicine, or finance, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. Can you trust a legal brief or a drug discovery report if the system is inherently prone to confident fabrication? Probably not for anything high-stakes, not anytime soon.
Is This The End, Or Just A Reality Check?
So, is the revolution over? Absolutely not. But this backlash is a critical and necessary pressure valve. The staggering energy use, the ethical dilemmas, the economic distortions—they all need to be addressed head-on. The revolution will be defined by how we regulate it, how companies choose to implement it responsibly, and whether we build safeguards. The optimistic view, like the hopes for positive change, depends on us navigating these pitfalls. The backlash means people are paying attention. And that might be the only thing that prevents a total mess.
