Why This Once-Popular Holiday Cookie Tin At Costco Is Losing Fans

Artificial intelligence is involved in everything now — from producing music to automatically flipping burgers in fast food kitchens. Now, AI has allegedly popped up in a place you may have never expected to see it: on the Christmastime tin of Danish Butter Cookies. Yep, those timeless tins that are often reused for storing photos or sewing supplies once the cookies have been eaten are apparently the latest victims of AI-generated imaging.

On the r/Costco Reddit thread, u/PopeBruhLXIX posted a series of photos of the cookie tins with the title, "Why are the Danish Cookies AI?" The tins in question come from a brand called Kelsen, which produces a variety of Danish cookies. During the holiday season, its famous butter cookies are packed in tins with a festive design. In the photos posted to Reddit, two different Kelsen cookie tins feature exactly that: log cabins in a snowy forest and children ice skating over a frozen river with windmills in the background. It seems normal enough, but as with a lot of AI-generated art, the features and details are distorted when you look closer.

For starters, one of the children playing in the snow is missing an arm, and another has short, pointed arms and no hands. The other two children have disproportionately short arms that don't match their bodies. The tin with the windmill illustration depicts a notably incorrect structural design. Random, disjointed pipes are coming off the fan blades, while in the background, far-off windmills have distorted shapes, similar to what you might see in a surrealist painting.

So far, neither Costco nor Kelsen has responded to the criticism or confirmed the use of AI for the designs. After all, even if AI was used for the images, this doesn't affect the taste or quality of the cookies. Yet there are currently over 300 comments on the Reddit post, with many users stating they've complained to Kelsen and are refusing to buy the cookies.

What seems to be bothering customers the most is how the brand still advertises the artwork on its tins. On Kelsen's website, the company states, "Designer tins is a business area that Kelsen has always been known for ... we take pride in the fact that many of our previous designer tins have become collector's items." To use AI-generated art feels lazy and inauthentic, and it, of course, takes the work away from an actual artist. As we've seen in AI-generated food commercials, the results can feel uncomfortable and almost jarring to look at. When it comes to art, writing, and music, we all appreciate the human touch — yet we've also already seen fortune cookie notes written by AI.

Kelsen's cookie tins are sturdy, practical, and reusable, and not so long ago, they had timeless artwork on the exterior. When AI-generated art shows up instead, it takes away that classic nostalgia. The cookies are a nice treat alongside coffee or tea, but keeping the tin was another part of their appeal. That aspect just became a lot less marketable.