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384 points gbugniot | 44 comments | | HN request time: 0.305s | source | bottom
1. jsheard ◴[] No.46231255[source]
OP is the original upload, but the agency reposted it with English subs after it got popular outside of France: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLERt5ZkpQ4
replies(3): >>46232195 #>>46239082 #>>46239119 #
2. deltarholamda ◴[] No.46232195[source]
You can tell it's great visual storytelling because you don't even need to know the words.

I guess the McDonald's ad didn't need words either, but it was just depressing and awful.

replies(5): >>46232505 #>>46238697 #>>46239205 #>>46241598 #>>46241879 #
3. Extropy_ ◴[] No.46232505[source]
What was the McDonald's ad? Could you drop a link, perhaps?
replies(1): >>46232578 #
4. troyvit ◴[] No.46232578{3}[source]
Here's a guardian link that tells the story and includes the ad: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/11/mcdonalds-r...
replies(5): >>46232592 #>>46237806 #>>46239214 #>>46242221 #>>46242619 #
5. Extropy_ ◴[] No.46232592{4}[source]
Cheers bro!
6. Sprotch ◴[] No.46237806{4}[source]
Thank you! Goodness, that ad made me want to barf
replies(2): >>46239004 #>>46243173 #
7. Aloha ◴[] No.46238697[source]
I thought the McD add was hilarious - I would have preferred it not be AI.
replies(2): >>46239127 #>>46242760 #
8. amelius ◴[] No.46239004{5}[source]
That ad looks like a concatenation of Tiktok shorts.
replies(3): >>46239159 #>>46240501 #>>46241274 #
9. johnnyanmac ◴[] No.46239082[source]
Very cute story. It's a shame my cynic brain is telling me "but wolves can't survive off of berries and nuts". Also, I guess fish are fair game in the forest hierarchy. Should have user an omnivore.
replies(5): >>46240024 #>>46241297 #>>46241380 #>>46241418 #>>46241620 #
10. johnnyanmac ◴[] No.46239127{3}[source]
The ad felt like a family guy skit. And animated about as well as modern FG animation.

I guess that will speak to if you will find the ad funny or just depressing. I don't think the Ai helped either way.

11. ◴[] No.46239159{6}[source]
12. anonzzzies ◴[] No.46239205[source]
I thought the McDonalds one was good and what does it matter it was AI ; mcdonalds makes artificial food and everything about the place is artificial so why not artificial ads?
replies(2): >>46239936 #>>46240712 #
13. nightshift1 ◴[] No.46239214{4}[source]
Sometimes telling the truth is unwelcome I guess.
14. qingcharles ◴[] No.46239936{3}[source]
I'm pro-AI but I thought the Coca-Cola and McDonald's ads were shit. The Coke one was especially egregious because if the creators hadn't been lazy they could have made it look half-decent. Instead it's janky and inconsistent and ugly.
replies(1): >>46243134 #
15. felipellrocha ◴[] No.46240024[source]
Suspension of disbelief.
16. ◴[] No.46240501{6}[source]
17. fogj094j0923j4 ◴[] No.46240712{3}[source]
>artificial food

As if people are not "cooking" the exact same food bought from these supermarkets.

replies(1): >>46240898 #
18. stackghost ◴[] No.46240898{4}[source]
I don't usually make salads with 750 calories and an entire day's worth of sodium when I cook.
19. littlestymaar ◴[] No.46241274{6}[source]
That's what happens when you just concatenate the output of an AI trained in Tiktok shorts …

(Which is a shame, as IA video generation can do much better if the author cares a bit about what they're doing).

replies(1): >>46242486 #
20. littlestymaar ◴[] No.46241297[source]
> Also, I guess fish are fair game in the forest hierarchy

Fish don't appear to have the ability to speak or engage in social relationship with other animals in the story, so it makes sense to eat them. Like vegan find it OK eating mushrooms even though they are closer to us than they are to plants.

replies(1): >>46242391 #
21. probably_wrong ◴[] No.46241380[source]
I don't think it's only from a cynic point of view - the question "if meat is murder, am I a bad person if I literally can't survive without it?" is a fair and interesting one.

Of course that's not the point of the ad and I don't blame them for not making it a philosophical discussion, but it's the same approach that Madagascar uses (spoiler for a 20yo movie) to resolve their main conflict and both feel like cheating - if the penguins can think, I always thought, then so should the fishes.

replies(1): >>46242348 #
22. legostormtroopr ◴[] No.46241418[source]
Wolves (and all dogs) could be vegetarians as they aren't obligate omnivores - and in certain conditions where pray is sparse they do eat berries to surviven. Cats on the other hand are obligate carnivores and can't produce taurine amino acids, so they have to eat meat to survive.
replies(1): >>46242940 #
23. ryandrake ◴[] No.46241598[source]
It’s probably a mistake to read too much into it but I can’t help but notice the McDonald’s ad is kind of a mirror held up to all the things that American culture has been progressing into: cynical, mean, isolated, artificial... whatever the opposite of “wholesome” is. Totally off-key for what Christmas is supposed to stand for. Christmas (at least the secular holiday) is supposed to be about kindness, putting differences aside, enjoying people and family, and the commercial was pretty much the opposite of that.
replies(1): >>46242592 #
24. ars ◴[] No.46241879[source]
I liked the McDonald's ad quite a bit because it encapsulated how I feel about this time of year - although I've never in my life eaten in a McDonald's and don't intend to start.
25. ◴[] No.46242221{4}[source]
26. latexr ◴[] No.46242348{3}[source]
> I don't think it's only from a cynic point of view - the question "if meat is murder, am I a bad person if I literally can't survive without it?" is a fair and interesting one.

I think the argument is “meat is murder because you can survive without it”. Maybe that doesn’t work for the wolf, but I mean, it’s literally a story being made up for a child, and animals in those are allegories for humans.

I can choose to not eat meat and live healthily, but I’m not going to feed only vegetables to a pet cat, who needs something different. To each what they need, as ethically as possible. When you can minimise harm, do.

27. latexr ◴[] No.46242391{3}[source]
> Like vegan find it OK eating mushrooms even though they are closer to us than they are to plants.

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungus. Complaining about eating those is akin to complaining about eating apples; you’re not harming the tree.

replies(1): >>46242665 #
28. Tade0 ◴[] No.46242486{7}[source]
Looking at it I see familiar elements, which are used by an artist going by the name Gossip Goblin to draw apocalyptic visions of a humanity far in the future that, for the N-th time, almost wiped itself out via increasingly invasive body modifications.
29. oneeyedpigeon ◴[] No.46242592{3}[source]
Here in the UK, Tesco is running a pretty similar campaign to the McDonald's one (without the AI): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711Cq8_E0oI

I think Brits tend to be more cynical than Americans, though, so it kinda tracks.

replies(2): >>46243150 #>>46243230 #
30. xg15 ◴[] No.46242619{4}[source]
> “However, we notice – based on the social comments and international media coverage – that for many guests this period is ‘the most wonderful time of the year’.”

How to make your corporate response sound even more AI than the actual AI...

> "And here’s the part people don’t see: the hours that went into this job far exceeded a traditional shoot. Ten people, five weeks, full-time.”

If it didn't even save time, then what was the point?

replies(1): >>46242899 #
31. tialaramex ◴[] No.46242665{4}[source]
So, although it's difficult to generalize because exactly where the line is drawn varies from one vegan to another, it's generally not enough that the animal wasn't directly harmed.

For example the honey bees make honey for a reason, just as apple trees make apples for a reason and maple trees make a sugary sap for a reason. "So that humans can eat it" isn't the reason in either case. The apples and maple syrup are categorised differently by vegans because the trees aren't animals. That's still an arbitrary line, but so are most things.

replies(1): >>46242815 #
32. abc123abc123 ◴[] No.46242760{3}[source]
Yes, it was brilliant! As for AI, who cares? It's a commercial. Laugh, and move on.
33. latexr ◴[] No.46242815{5}[source]
> bees make honey for a reason

For themselves. To eat. So it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey, which is the result of their labour.

But surely there’s nuance there. I don’t doubt there are ethical growers who provide bees with an extra nice and controlled environment, plus care for them and help them fight pests, and thus feel like taking a share of the produced honey is a fair trade. The bees might agree.

> "So that humans can eat it" isn't the reason in either case.

But it is. In the case of many fruits, the goal is for an animal (humans included) to eat them, seeds and all, then poop them out (bonus fertiliser) somewhere else.

> That's still an arbitrary line, but so are most things.

No disagreement there, but I don’t see how any of that is relevant to my comment. I was correcting a misconception about mushrooms, not debating the nuances of vegan opinions. I don’t care for the label and don’t think it’s helpful to fight about what it means. It’s much more important to strive to be progressively better than to aim for perfection and fail.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231187#46242623

replies(2): >>46242961 #>>46242991 #
34. IsTom ◴[] No.46242899{5}[source]
Ah the famous AI efficiency and productivity boost.
35. alecmev ◴[] No.46242940{3}[source]
We can chemically synthesize taurine just fine.
replies(1): >>46243192 #
36. tialaramex ◴[] No.46242961{6}[source]
Essentially all modern honey farming is what you're calling "ethical". It's too expensive to replace the colony each year now that we have an alternative, and a winter - even a relatively mild winter in most parts of the world - will kill the bees if you've stolen all their food.

Unlike the maple tree, we do know how to substitute the valuable honey for nutritionally similar but cheaper alternatives - you can buy suitable food commercially because this is a whole industry, nevertheless, vegans object to our intervention, the bees didn't make nutritionally equivalent bee food, they made honey. Even farmers who choose to calibrate and remove only some honey, judging what will be enough for their colony to survive, are considered not to meet vegan requirements for the same reason.

To the extent there's a shared definition it really is as simple as originally explained, animal: not OK, non-animal: fine.

One of my professors (who is now vegan) had an ethical rule prohibiting eating things which, like him, had backbones. Same idea, it's more similar to me, therefore don't eat it. All such lines in the sand are somewhat arbitrary.

replies(2): >>46243109 #>>46243199 #
37. gbuk2013 ◴[] No.46242991{6}[source]
> For themselves. To eat. So it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey, which is the result of their labour.

On the other hand the bee social structure (not sure what the right word to use here) is so brutal that taking their honey seems to be just keeping pace. :)

38. ◴[] No.46243109{7}[source]
39. InsideOutSanta ◴[] No.46243134{4}[source]
The worst part about the Coke ad is the fake "making of" video they released to show how much manual work went into their ads. The "pencil sketches" ostensibly made by humans in the making of were also AI-generated.
40. InsideOutSanta ◴[] No.46243150{4}[source]
That ad is brutal. I feel sorry for people who experience Christmas like this.
41. InsideOutSanta ◴[] No.46243173{5}[source]
Both because of the content, and because of the odd perspective shifts in the AI-generated footage. It made me feel like I was drunk.
42. raddan ◴[] No.46243192{4}[source]
Are you a wolf (or a dog)?
43. latexr ◴[] No.46243199{7}[source]
> vegans object to our intervention

Many might, but many don’t. This is a prime example of why fighting over the label is counterproductive. You’re putting a bunch of different people in the same sack and criticising them for something which the group is not consensual on.

Again, I have no desire to nitpick over what makes one a vegan or not. That’s a waste of everyone’s time and only generates unnecessary conflict. It is not only detrimental but unbearably boring.

44. davedx ◴[] No.46243230{4}[source]
Seemed pretty realistic to me!