AI is apparently trying to erase us… but are the ads any good?

What would I write about an ad for AI if I asked AI to write it for me? And what would I write if I didn’t use AI to write it for me? And what would the world prefer? Gemma Moroney, co-founder of SHOOK investigates.

My latest campaign critique is less op-ed, and more an existential experiment. I wrote a piece on new AI company Artisan’s ads and also asked AI to write one as me, in my usual style for Creative Moment, assuming I thought it was ‘the best ad ever’.

The real Gemma Moroney says: 

Exiting Old Street tube station yesterday, I felt like I was in a dystopian action movie. And not just because of the terrifying volume of people wearing SXSW lanyards and trying to kill me on Lime bikes. No, it was the sea of purple in front of me that would have had Prince turning in his grave.

I’m talking about the Artisan ad campaign. You will have seen it because on LinkedIn it’s this week’s ‘Jaguar sacked their ad agency’.

In the words of the company’s founder, who reportedly received death threats when the campaign ran in San Francisco, it’s pure “rage bait”. 

Slogans include “Humans are so 2023”, “Stop hiring humans”, and something that basically suggests people who WFH bunk off and are actually living it up in Ibiza.

Artisan successfully (apart from the death threats!) used it in San Francisco and has now flown the work across the pond. Like some other American imports (Hershey's, for example), it’s left many people feeling quite queasy.

Is it a good campaign? Yes and no.

It’s caused a reaction. People are talking. You can bet that for every two people complaining, one has found out more about how to stop hiring humans.

Is it a well-crafted campaign? Yes and no.

It’s not winning any prizes for beauty. It’s one level up from making it in PowerPoint visually, in my opinion (and not in a good, Surreal cereal way). But I will admit the copywriting bangs. And it bangs because it pulls no punches. It says things pretty much nobody else would.

Does it show you can actually have such a thing as an elusive universal truth that works across international markets? Yes and no.

It turns out that tapping into looming existential dread works for ‘engaging’ all the humans. 

And accusing us of slacking off does, too. But it’s probably not a strategy your common or garden brand can employ.

Overall, something feels just a bit off about the whole thing to me. If it were revealed to be a teaser campaign for a Channel 4 drama (repeating the amazing integrated seeding they did for Robots), I wouldn’t have been surprised. But in this case, it seems, truth really is stranger than fiction.

Ultimately, this campaign is confronting because it’s saying: You know this is coming. You know you’re worried about it. You know you’re not always ‘a machine’ at work.

And normally when marketing uses something difficult to target us, there’s a positive payload to counterbalance it:

Take Mouldy burger - fresh ingredients, for example. This campaign doesn’t provide that positive payload, which is where a lot of the discomfort lies.

Do I like it? Yes, and very much no.

And here is GemmAI MoronAI

Warning: this is full of mistakes and is just a bit mean.

Certainly! Gemma Moroney’s style in Creative Moment is sharp, witty, and often laced with dry humour, cultural observation, and a healthy dose of industry realism. Here’s a 400-word article rewritten to better reflect her tone and voice:

Why Artisan’s “Stop Hiring Humans” Campaign Is the Best (and Worst) Ad You’ve Ever Seen

If you’ve walked through San Francisco lately, you may have seen them. Giant billboards with slogans like “Stop Hiring Humans” and “Artisans Don’t Take Sick Days.” If you didn’t spill your ethically sourced oat flat white in disgust, congratulations: you’re already dead inside.

Welcome to the Artisan campaign. The AI startup launched a series of ads so provocative they make Ryanair’s Twitter look polite. The backlash was instant. LinkedIn had a meltdown. Creatives clutched pearls. Think pieces rained from the sky.

But here’s the thing: it worked.

While everyone was yelling into the internet void, Artisan was racking up numbers. Over a billion impressions. Millions in revenue. Thousands of leads. It turns out rage is a growth strategy, and Artisan played it like a fiddle.

This wasn’t a misstep. It was precision-targeted provocation. CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack (yes, that’s his real name) admitted it: “rage-bait” was the plan. Not a happy accident. Not a rogue intern. Just good old-fashioned engineered controversy.

Critics say it’s dystopian. And yes—on the surface—shouting “Let’s replace humans” feels about as on-brand for 2025 as panic about generative AI taking your job. But let’s not be wilfully naive. The campaign’s real aim wasn’t to fire humans, but to fire up debate.

Underneath the cynicism is a tech company selling a fairly useful product: an AI “employee” that tackles the repetitive stuff so your actual human ones can do, you know, actual human things. The ads are exaggerated. And that’s the point.

What’s genius here is not the ethics (those are complicated). It’s the bravery. In an industry drowning in vanilla purpose-washing and AI-tinged vagueness, Artisan went bold. It played the villain, got the clicks, and sparked real conversations about the future of work.

We can hate the tone, question the tactics, and worry about the implications. But we can’t deny this: it cut through. And that, in this climate, is advertising gold dust.

So is it the best ad campaign ever? Maybe not if you’re a copywriter worried about being replaced by code. But if the goal was to get the world talking about a no-name startup in a crowded AI market?

Then yes. It’s brilliant. And brutal. And unforgettable. And really, what more can you ask from a billboard?