‘An INSTANT turnoff’: Woman picks up $150 advent calendar from Sephora. Then she takes a closer look at the box
Artificial intelligence is everywhere now. If you’ve spent even a minute online in 2025, you know that. Generative AI exploded over the past year, and it’s seeped into everything: art, advertising, packaging, you name it.
But scrolling past AI online is one thing, and it’s another to pay for a physical product from a major retailer and realize the artwork might not have been made by an actual human.
One Sephora Canada shopper says that’s exactly what happened when she purchased the 2025 Sephora Favorites Advent Calendar.
Woman Suspects Art for the Sephora Favorites Advent Calendar 2025 Was AI-generated
According to TikTok creator Laura (@dailywiat), it was. In her video, she zooms in on the artwork and points out several details that simply don’t look right.
This year’s calendar features a winter resort scene with chalets and ski lifts. On screen, she adds, “Sephora please hire real artists. This advent calendar was over $150. Generative AI art is really seeping into all parts of life.”
She shows one of the houses up close, with windows placed at random, a door floating where a window should be, and proportions that feel slightly off.
Then she focuses on a cable car that should have people inside. Instead, the “people” are just vague silhouettes with no detail at all. “Multiple people would’ve seen this in production and said ‘yeah that’s great!’” she writes.
Then she pans across other cable cars to show one that isn’t even attached to the cable and is instead hovering in mid-air. “There has to be a larger movement to call out companies that use AI art instead of hiring real artists,” she adds.
Did Sephora Actually Use AI?
There’s no definitive way to tell. Even though AI-detector tools exist, they’re widely considered unreliable, and printed packaging only makes the results less trustworthy. We’ve contacted Sephora to ask it directly and will update this piece if the company responds.
However, Laura isn’t the only person who noticed something off. A user on r/Sephora shared a photo of the same calendar and said the artwork looked AI-generated to them as well.
Commenters under Laura’s video echoed her concerns.
“What bugs me is that when they hire real artists they drown him with edits, revisions, changing every little detail because it’s not perfect. And then suddenly when they use AI they don’t mind there’s bodies cut in half and dozens of mistakes,” one person wrote.
“I need these corporations to understand that AI output makes me put a product down IMMEDIATELY,” another chimed in. “If you don’t think the product was worth the cost of an artist, why would I think it’s worth buying?”
“How are people not talking about this??? For such a huge company it won’t kill them to hire a single artist :(”
“I am a digital artist and graphic designer who lost my job to ai… i love sephora and makeup so this hurts.”
@dailywiat @sephoracanada And they value it at over $700 #aiart #antiai #sephora #artistsoftiktok #aislop ♬ original sound – WildCraftedStudio
The Effects AI Has Had on Artists’ Livelihoods
The BBC recently reported on how generative AI has shaken creative fields, finding that more than two-thirds of workers in the industry believe it has undermined their job security.
Graphic designers, illustrators, copywriters, and other creatives have shared that they’ve had to pivot careers or take on new types of work entirely, since relying on commissions alone is no longer sustainable for many.
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