Limerick council used AI to sell a Christmas it has not built

Four thousand euro. That is what Limerick City and County Council put on the table to show its own citizens a Christmas it had not built yet, and the council will tell you the money bought a good news story.

I did not go to Limerick for this. I read it on my knees like everybody else, and the account says the video went up on the council's social channels in mid-October to promote Christmas in Limerick. Then the comments went off.

The clip was made by an architectural rendering company called Render Vision, from computer-generated imagery and AI tools, according to the Irish Examiner. Two 3D artists got four weeks. The raw material was technical drawings and descriptions of production elements, infrastructure and lighting designs. There is no camera in it, and the council has not named the tools.

Here is the inventory, flat, because every line is true. Two 3D artists. Four weeks. A brand-new festival concept. A Christmas at the Castle that has not opened its doors. A Santa party. A fair at the Crescent that is still a proposal. A bill one councillor puts at €4,000. And a comment section, closed.

The Metropolitan District councillors took it apart at their meeting. Social Democrats councillor Elisa O'Donovan told the executive that all 21 councillors in the area had been contacted about the post. "It was so problematic that this was put up, and for so many reasons," she said, as the Limerick Post reported. "Number one, we don't need AI to showcase our city." Fine Gael's Daniel Butler called the decision unwise and the result amateurish. His party colleague Sarah Kiely called the video "the biggest heap of rubbish I came across in my life," then the line that traveled: "When I saw that AI video, I thought we were in the Limerick version of the polar express." Dan McSweeney said switching off the comments was "behaviour that you wouldn't get in Russia." The Irish Independent carried those.

The case for the council

A local authority with a festival to sell and no footage of it has a real problem. You cannot film an event that has not happened. Christmas in Limerick is a new festival concept that does not begin until November 21, and the fair at the Crescent was still only a proposal when the video went up. Promotion starts weeks before the lights go on, and councils have used the artist's impression for a century.

The council's note to councillors called the video an accurate and realistic representation of the live event experience, per the Irish Examiner. Sean Lenihan, the council's director of economic, tourism, culture, property and corporate buildings, said the aim was to get ahead of Christmas and tell people what was planned. "It was acknowledged that it was an AI-generated video because we don't have that particular type of footage yet," he said. "We will have real footage next year." He took the hit without flinching: "I have big shoulders, and I'm willing to take the slap on the wrist."

That is an honest shrug from a man doing his job, and it answers the wrong question.

Why a city should not render itself

A council can render an event it cannot film. The open question is whether it should hand a machine the job of selling a real place to the people who live in it.

Start with the bill. Shane Hickey-O'Mara, the Social Democrats councillor, put the cost at €4,000 and the maker in Germany, then said the thing that should end the argument: "Ask any artist and they'll tell you how much work they can produce for €4,000." The Examiner's columnist supplied the comparator: she thought of at least four videographers who would have done better, most in less than four weeks.

Then the door. Lenihan said the comments went off as "just a resourcing issue, and to stop misinformation and disinformation." Kiely's reply is the one I keep: "The first time we face any real engagement, we take it down." A public body that spends public money and then closes the window when the public answers has handed the argument to its critics. The video has been watched more than 70,000 times, the Independent reported: a lot of people the council invited in and then asked to be quiet.

Limerick did not invent this. The Ghana National Film Authority took the same fire for a synthetic tourism push, Swedesboro Brewing learned an AI spokesperson loses to a town's regulars, the National Trust pulled ads after a machine got a real place wrong, and Royal Mail built a Christmas spot on a synthetic voice and got the row to match. Prada went the other way and hired a Disney animator to draw its Christmas by hand.

The council has an AI Oversight Committee, and a senior executive officer, Sonja Reidy, said it would consider how a human-centric approach to image rendering can be written into an organizational AI policy. The coverage does not say whether this video ever crossed its desk.

Kiely said the council needed to look at its communications and marketing strategy and at how public money is spent. She is right. The minute of that meeting carries the names of everyone who signed off, and every council weighing the same shortcut is reading it.

The law of the trade holds whether you run a studio or a city: a picture of a place is a promise about that place, and the person who keeps the promise is the one standing on the wet street in December. Limerick has the Milk Market, a river, lights that come on for real on November 21, and a bench of people who make things for a living. It did not need a render.

Four thousand euro bought a video the council's own members called amateurish. The same money, spent on a videographer in the city, buys footage of a Limerick that is actually there.

Kiely wants the communications budget opened up in the council's budget talks, and the AI policy is still being written. The next €4,000 is the test.