Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack defended the marketing campaign’s messaging in an interview with SFGate. “They’re considerably dystopian, however so is AI,” he informed the outlet in a textual content message. “The best way the world works is altering.” In one other message he wrote, “We needed one thing that might draw eyes—you do not draw eyes with boring messaging.”
So what does Artisan truly do? Its major product is an AI “gross sales agent” referred to as Ava that supposedly automates the work of discovering and messaging potential clients. The corporate claims it really works with “no human enter” and prices 96% lower than hiring a human for a similar position. Though, given the present state of AI expertise, it is prudent to be skeptical of those claims.
Artisan additionally has plans to develop its AI instruments past gross sales into areas like advertising and marketing, recruitment, finance, and design. Its gross sales agent seems to be its solely current product thus far.
In the meantime, the billboards stay seen all through San Francisco, quietly fueling existential dread in a metropolis that has already seen quite a lot of stress because the pandemic. Among the billboards characteristic extra messages, like “Rent Artisans, not people,” and one which performs on angst over distant work: “Artisan’s Zoom cameras won’t ever ‘not be working’ at this time.”
