If you’ve taken the New York City subway lately, you might’ve seen an ad that’s driving social media wild.
The ad shows messages from two employees: Steve, who says he’s “not coming in today sry,” and an AI sales agent named Ava, who says she booked 12 meetings and researched 1,269 prospects. The ad’s header reads, “Fire Steve. Hire Ava.” In other words, fire humans and replace them with AI.
The ad comes from AI company Artisan, which offers an AI agent to replace low-level sales representatives. The company is known for its controversial anti-human advertising—and the campaign is certainly doing its job, in the sense that everyone seems to be talking about it.
But are provocative ads still worthwhile if they’re only generating hate?
Social media tears the ad to shreds
With a whopping 71% of Americans concerned that AI will permanently put humans out of work as of 2025, the new Artisan ad plays into a widespread anxiety.
It’s a hallmark of the company’s branding: Other Artisan billboards throughout New York City and San Francisco feature messages including “Your next hire isn’t human” and “Stop hiring humans.”
While the ads capture people’s attention, that attention isn’t necessarily positive, and the latest ad’s reception on social media proves it.
Many social media users were quick to undermine the ad’s logic. “Anyone who’s ever hired people knows that this is actually signal to hire Steve not Ava,” one user wrote, with others agreeing in their replies.
“Steve at least *tells* you when he’s not able to work,” another user commented. “Ava will just lie, hallucinate, and blow smoke up your ass.”
Others argued that while AI may outdeliver on quantity, that’s no guarantee of quality. One user wrote that Ava likely “booked 12 hallucinated meetings” and is “straight up lying about researching 1,269 prospects.”
“Was the research any good?” wondered another poster. “Who knows? Who cares? We have QUANTITY!”
One user argued that even if provocation is the goal, it’s only contributing to growing anti-AI attitudes. An April survey from Gallup found that 31% of Gen Z says AI makes them angry, while only 22% said they were excited about the technology, a drop of 14 percentage points from the previous year.
“I’ve seen people who work in AI act shocked and dismayed by the hostile and sometimes violent way people talk about them,” the user wrote. “But it really seems like they’re intentionally inviting it at this point.”
Why Artisan sells itself as anti-human
The negative response may look bad on paper, but according to Artisan’s CEO and co-founder Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, his company’s ads are meant to be provocative. In a blog post about Artisan’s “Stop hiring humans” campaign, Carmichael-Jack wrote that it “works because it’s uncomfortable.”
“The belief underneath is more careful than three words on a wall, but the three words still mean what they say: stop hiring humans for the work AI can do better, and stop pretending that work was ever good for humans in the first place,” he wrote.
Throughout the post, Carmichael-Jack expanded on Artisan’s AI philosophy: not to replace humans with AI across the board, but specifically in roles like cold outbound that were “never good for humans in the first place.”
“On the days I think about what comes after this product, this company, this decade, I think about a world where people work less and live more,” he added. “That’s what I want the billboards to be remembered as a step toward.”
Artisan has not responded to Fast Company’s request for comment.