London's Nightmarish Christmas mural shows what happens when AI replaces designers

You would think the roasting that the Coca-Cola Christmas ad received would have taught everyone to steer clear of generative AI when it comes to festive marketing efforts. Yet somehow a London developer saw fit to treat the public to an even more nightmarish piece of AI Christmas art.

It appears that generative AI was used to generate art for a huge Christmas banner over a restaurant at a development in Kingston-upon-Thames in West London. And it seems that nobody gave the resulting hallucination even a cursory glance to check that the result was presentable, leading to many perplexed locals.

This mural has gone up in Kingston, ostensibly for Christmas but AI has ensured it's actually to celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu

— @mattthr.bsky.social (@mattthr.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-11-22T21:09:35.188Z

Described by one Londoner as a "Lovecraftian horror" in a post on Reddit, the AI Christmas mural was located above a Bill's and Côte Brasserie at Riverside Walk. Apparently intended to depict a festive scene on an iced-over Thames, it featured grotesquely tortured faces, contorted snowmen and Santa Clauses, a dog with the head of a seagull and an oar made out of dog paws.

At least the landowners have seen sense and finally had the horror show torn down, which is more than can be said for Coca-Cola. But people are wondering how it got approved in the first place when the distorted figures and chimeric creatures recall the AI art hallucinations that were common when diffusion models first took off a few years ago.

Scenes of Lovecraftian horror at Kingston’s riverside Christmas mural… from r/london

At first glance, it's difficult to grasp what the AI user was even aiming for. The clothing of the people in the image led some observers to speculate that the piece was intended as a comment on world hunger or the plight of refugees.

Reports in local media have said that the private investment firm that owns the development has claimed that the image was supposed to be inspired by an artwork by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. But while the 16th century Flemish painter is known for his busy and sometimes surreal scenes, even his imagination didn't extend to the kinds of hallucinations that AI is capable of delivering.

People have compared the piece to the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Géricault's Raft of the Medusa and John Carpenter's classic horror movie, The Thing. Not exactly feel-good festive material.

“You know what’s Christmassy? A snowman with a f***ing eye on his cheek,” one user commented on Reddit

Others fear the piece is symptomatic of a general decline in the amount of care given to creative assets.

“I used to fret over whether I’d sent something to print with a typo or the wrong colour profile. I can’t believe someone would hit go on the production of this, and not feel any kind of worry or shame,” one person commented on the Bluesky post above.

Others point out that the disastrous decoration shows why brands should employ designers rather than put blind faith in AI.

“I've worked on dozens of projects that management has signed off on having never opened a file (thanks, audit history), but thanks to talented artist involved the mistakes have been at a minimum,” one person writes. This is just exposing how utterly lazy executive level managers can be”.