Artificial intelligence has experienced rapid development in recent years, prompting many companies to promote it as a replacement for human employees. However, a recent series of billboards has sparked widespread concern online, promoting the idea of replacing humans with artificial workers using unintentionally terrifying imagery and phrasing, making it one of the most unsettling tech campaigns yet.
Typically, billboards aim to grab pedestrians’ attention using powerful imagery and engaging text, but this campaign drew attention for all the wrong reasons. Instead of presenting AI in an appealing way, one billboard features an image of an artificial woman with laser-beaming eyes alongside the phrase: “Stop hiring humans. Hire Ava, the AI.” The ads appear to joke about human error, but they adopted a dystopian, fear-inducing style that presents AI as the stuff of nightmares.
A photo of the billboard was shared on the “r/graphic_design” forum on Reddit, where users reacted with mixed comments. One commented: “The irony is that we usually want to connect with real humans, not robots.” The ad appears to be part of a broader campaign by the company Artisan titled “Stop hiring humans,” spotted at several locations in San Francisco. The campaign also included another ad promoting unified AI-based software instead of human developers, which drew negative reactions on X, where one user expressed their discontent by stating: “This is the worst dystopian nightmare that could happen in our reality, and it’s shocking to see it like this,” while another wondered: “Could this be satire?”
