Use of AI puts Limerick Council on Santa’s naughty list

A CHRISTMAS video from Limerick Council to highlight seasonal events for 2026 in the city was this week greeted...

A CHRISTMAS video from Limerick Council to highlight seasonal events for 2026 in the city was this week greeted with a unanimous ‘bah humbug’ from councillors in the Metropolitan District.

At Monday’s area meeting of elected representatives for the city environs, the spirit of goodwill was left outside the door of the Merchants Quay chamber as they carolled, disapprovingly, in unison at the local authority’s use of AI.

The offending promotional video, using computer-generated imagery, went live last weekend, to show-off some of Limerick City and County Council’s grand plans for this year’s festive entertainment.

Social Democrats councillor Elisa O’Donovan pointed out to the council executive that all 21 councillors in the Metropolitan area had been contacted in relation to the video on social media advertising Christmas in Limerick.

“It was clearly AI made. I had a group of young filmmakers using my house to film a Halloween short film over the weekend, and when they came in, the first thing they said to me was, ‘Oh my gosh, did you see the video that was put up on the Council social media of Christmas?’ They couldn’t believe that this video had gone up, and that it was so clearly AI,” Cllr O’Donovan commented.

“It was so problematic that this was put up, and for so many reasons. Number one, we don’t need AI to showcase our city. Look at it outside today; it’s absolutely stunning and beautiful, and this is so misleading. Secondly, we’ve spoken so many times in this council chamber about how it is a very difficult environment at the moment for our creatives in this city who are being replaced by AI, and to see our own Council put out a video that is clearly AI.”

The City West representative took the view that the most disappointing thing about the Council’s use of AI was their reaction to the negative comments on social media over the weekend.

“There was clearly an outpouring of negative criticism about this, and rightly so. And the council’s response was to turn off the comments on social media. That is not a legitimate response to something that I think people were clearly upset about,” she insisted.

Fine Gael councillor Daniel Butler argued that the Council’s intentions were true and correct by trying to promote Christmas and to share the good news of what is on offer this year. However, he too considered the use of AI in this instance as “unwise”.

“While the intention was good, I think the use of AI was unwise, to say the least. If I’m honest, I found it a bit amateurish because it’s something that probably even someone as unskilled as I could have generated, and I don’t have a huge amount of skills,” Cllr Butler admitted.

“Giving the creative potential and creative skills within our own community, I would have liked to have seen those leveraged rather than using AI. I think there’s a lesson to be learned from it, and I would hope that that lesson would be acknowledged once time is given to reflect on this,” he added.

Fine Gael councillor Sarah Kiely likened the local authority’s AI video to “the Limerick version of The Polar Express”.

“We have budget negotiations coming up at the end of this month. By God, we need to look at our communications and marketing strategy, how they’re funded, and how public money is spent on a mishmash of a mess,” she fumed.

Councillors throughout the chamber criticised the video with comparisons drawn to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ‘Terminator’, ‘The Grinch Stole Christmas’ and the Coca Cola Christmas adverts. Cllr Dan McSweeney (FG) even went as far as suggesting that removing the comments on social media was “behaviour that you wouldn’t get in Russia”.

In response, the Council’s Director of Economic, Tourism, Culture, Property & Corporate Buildings, Sean Lenihan, explained that it was felt the local authority should get out ahead of Christmas to tell people what was planned.

“On the video that was mentioned, it was acknowledged that it was an AI-generated video because we don’t have that particular type of footage yet. We will have real footage next year, but the whole purpose of the video clip was to show Christmas at the Castle, the Santa party, and the proposed fair at the Crescent. It was really a good news story,” Mr Lenihan insisted.