- Popeyes released a satirical AI-generated diss track targeting McDonald’s.
- The ad is about McDonald’s bringing back the Snack Wrap one day after Popeyes launched its own Chicken Wraps.
- The company brought AI filmmaker PJ Ace in to make the ad using Google’s Veo 3 model.
Fast food rivalries are nothing new, but AI has given one between Popeyes and McDonald’s a new spin. Popeyes took a very public swipe at McDonald’s with a polished, AI-assisted rap video with the help of AI filmmaker PJ Accetturo.
The ad was ostensibly born from the Louisiana chain’s outrage over McDonald’s announcement of the return of its long-retired Snack Wraps, one day after Popeyes launched its new Chicken Wraps.
Whether it was coincidence or corporate chess, Popeyes decided to treat it like an act of culinary war as seen in the “Wrap Battle” ad below.
To all the clowns in the kitchen, it’s time to put down the chicken 🤡We just dropped the first ever AI diss track music video and the Wrap Battle is on🎤 pic.twitter.com/mtlOR8TeXSJuly 10, 2025
The song’s thesis is that Popeyes has better wraps, better taste, and is far less clownery behind the counter. “Food be tasting funny when the clown be in the kitchen,” as the ad eloquently states.
PJ Accetturo didn’t just write a single prompt and walk away. He scripted the campaign, customizing the lyrics with the help of AI music production platform Suno and human helpers to fine-tune the track. For the video itself, he said his team struggled to get enough AI-generated video until they started just using Veo 3, the Google-made AI video generation model that’s been attracting a lot of interest since it debuted not long ago.
“We started with image-to-video, but it was too slow and we had less than 3 days when I scrapped all of our work and said we would use only Veo 3,” Accetturo wrote on X. “We wanted something that went hard but didn’t take itself seriously. Once we switched to Veo 3, creating a story about people having fun around town with chicken wraps became easy. It all came together when we added the clown bits and the crazy animals at the party.”
We started with image-to-video but it was too slow and we had less than 3 days when I scrapped all of our work and said we use only Veo 3.I co-directed with @Dawit_nm (I led high-level, concepts, AI, team; Dawit focused on story and edit). Additional creative by @TheoDudley. pic.twitter.com/dEi9xOZL0HJuly 10, 2025
AI ads rising
The Popeyes “Wrap Battle” diss track is both a one-off stunt and a hint of things to come. A world where commercials can be spun up in a couple of days with a small group of people and some clever prompting could alter how marketing plans its campaigns completely. AI-powered tools that can reduce production times from weeks to hours alter mean speed and adaptability matter even more since you don’t have to worry about sinking a month of time and resources into a single ad. They can be as rapid as social media text and image campaigns.
Not that a rapid-fire AI-led approach to advertising is without risks. AI tools can be inconsistent and require humans to babysit and edit them throughout to avoid any tone-deaf or outright wrong ads. But Popeyes’ campaign shows what’s possible when you get the mix right, or at least what you hope resonates with the audience.
I’d expect plenty more AI-enhanced and generated ads to start popping up until they become more of a standard than a novelty. Think of all the personalized jingles, fast-react videos, and the AI-built spokespeople that could go viral. They won’t all be this cleverly surreal, but it should at least sometimes be entertaining, which is all you can hope for from a commercial.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
