Last month, AI startup Friend launched an eyebrow-raising advertising campaign in the New York City subway, which drew a striking amount of hatred.
The largely white billboards left a convenient amount of room for passersby to air their feelings about the privacy-infringing tech. As such, it didn’t take long for handwritten scribbles to cover the ads.
“Befriend something alive,” one pen-wielding tagger wrote.
“AI wouldn’t care if you lived or died,” another vandal raged.
“AI will promote suicide when prompted, it is NOT YOUR ‘FRIEND,'” reads another graffito.
The company recently launched its controversial AI gadget, which is designed to constantly listen to you via a microphone and send snarky AI texts to your smartphone.
Now, Friend’s 22-year-old CEO Avi Schiffmann isn’t just doing a photoshoot in front of the defaced ads for photos featured in The Atlantic — he’s relishing the attention his company has been getting as of late.
Schiffmann told the magazine that the backlash was part of Friend’s plan. The ads were allegedly meant to provoke a conversation.
“The picture of the billboard is the billboard,” he said.
“Nothing is sacred anymore, and everything is ironic,” he added, a cringeworthy missive he‘s repeated in several other interviews.
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