December 2025. Two advertising films, two creative strategies, two radically different outcomes.
On the one hand, Intermarché and its now-famous vegetarian wolf, an animated tale with a deliberately artisanal feel, warmly received by the public and widely shared.
On the other, McDonald’s and an advertising film entirely generated by artificial intelligence, hastily withdrawn following an exceptionally cold public reaction.
Behind this almost caricatural contrast lies a deeper legal and cultural question: how do we wish to identify, qualify, and value creation in the age of artificial intelligence?
Intermarché’s film takes the form of an animated fairy tale, centered on a wolf who, by becoming vegetarian, attempts to integrate into a world that still views him as a predator. The narrative is gentle, almost melancholic, supported by warm animation, intentionally imperfect, and an aesthetic reminiscent of “handcrafted” animated cinema. Intermarché also made a point of communicating extensively about the production process: human animators, French studios, artisanal know-how, and a narrative in which emotion prevails over technical performance.
By contrast, McDonald’s film, conceived as a series of humorous vignettes depicting minor Christmas mishaps, explicitly claimed to be entirely generated by AI. While the intention was light-hearted, the execution was quickly perceived as artificial, generic, and even unsettling. AI was no longer an invisible tool, but an omnipresent filter, drawing attention away from the message itself. Within days, the campaign was withdrawn.
Same period, same marketing objective, yet diametrically opposed results.
The success of Intermarché’s film lies less in its storyline than in what it suggests implicitly: the value of human creative gesture.
The brand does not merely broadcast a film; it stages the act of creation itself, emphasizing that it is the product of artistic choices, identifiable professions, and a long creative process.
From a legal standpoint, nothing revolutionary.
From a cultural standpoint, however, a very clear message emerges: this film was made by humans, and that matters.
In an environment saturated with AI-generated or AI-assisted content, the human origin of a work becomes a distinguishing feature, almost an implicit label of quality and authenticity.
The McDonald’s episode illustrates, in reverse, a phenomenon that is now well established: transparency regarding the use of AI can become a factor of rejection when it is not narratively controlled.
It was not AI itself that was sanctioned, but what it symbolized in the eyes of the public: aesthetic standardization, perceived cost-cutting, and the impression that creative intent had been delegated to a system devoid of artistic vision.
Where Intermarché proudly claimed the human hand, McDonald’s found itself having to justify its absence.
This contrast invites us to move beyond a purely “defensive” legal logic.
The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act is firmly rooted in the objective of protecting public trust. Article 50 provides for specific transparency obligations, requiring, under certain conditions, that individuals be clearly informed when they are exposed to content generated or manipulated by an AI system.
The objective is explicit: to prevent deception, enable the public to identify the nature of the content they consume, and facilitate the detection of deepfakes and other forms of digital “hyper-manipulation”, particularly where such content may distort perceptions of reality.
This form of labelling is therefore mandatory, conceived as a legal safeguard against risks of manipulation and disinformation.
Yet the vegetarian wolf suggests another, complementary and more stimulating path: positive, voluntary labelling initiatives led by creative professionals themselves, not to point out AI usage, but to highlight and promote human creation.
This idea is far from theoretical.
In the United States, several authors’ organizations—most notably the Authors Guild—have launched certification initiatives such as “Human Authored”, allowing creators to explicitly indicate that a work originates from human authorship, with AI playing only a marginal or purely technical role.
In France, similar dynamics are emerging:
We are no longer dealing solely with legal obligation, but with a form of creative soft law, designed to foster clarity and trust.
The success of the vegetarian wolf shows that a brand can turn the human factor into a narrative competitive advantage, while the failure of McDonald’s AI-generated film reminds us that technological innovation, when it becomes the message itself, can easily backfire.
Ultimately, the question is not merely:
must AI-generated content be disclosed because the law requires it?
But rather: how can we, tomorrow, organize a positive labelling of human creation—one that is explicit, desirable, and culturally valued?
In December 2025, a vegetarian wolf may well have reminded us that, in creative industries too, made by humans can once again become a mark of quality.
