An AI company is trying ‘dystopian’ marketing

“It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop.” 

That famous quote from The Terminator is actually a pretty compelling ad for hiring a robot, if you’re the kind of person who’d hire a terminator. 

It also reminds us of a startup’s controversial new ad campaign that suggests companies replace human workers with bots. 

Artisan… 

… is a San Francisco-based software startup that offers AI-powered business development representatives, which it calls “Artisans.” 

Many other companies also sell AI chatbots designed to help sales employees with their workflows, but Artisan deployed a marketing campaign across San Francisco with posters of Ava, one of its chatbot avatars, and lines like:

• “Stop hiring humans”
• “Artisans won’t complain about work-life balance”
• “Artisan’s Zoom cameras will never ‘not be working’ today”

Many have mocked the billboards, joking that we could also replace partners and children with bots, while others have expressed anger.

But is it working?

Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack admitted to SFGate that the ads are “somewhat dystopian, but so is AI” and claimed that they have increased brand awareness and sales leads.

That doesn’t necessarily imply that more people are “hiring” Ava or that Artisan’s bots have or even could fully replace humans, despite not needing to do things like eat or sleep. 

What we do know is that people are increasingly worried about layoffs amid economic uncertainty and AI’s rise — and it’s not entirely unfounded: 

• In April, there were ~65k layoffs in the US, 800 of which were attributed to AI. 
• Experts have said we’ll need social safety nets in place for people who lose their jobs due to AI, but we don’t have them yet. 

So this marketing campaign succeeded in that it sure has people talking, but we’ll see if that’s a good thing for Artisan.