A San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup has plastered 'Stop Hiring Humans' across billboards from California to New York City, and the backlash has been anything but quiet. Artisan AI, which sells AI-powered virtual sales representatives, launched the campaign in October 2024 and has since expanded it to Times Square and bus stops across Manhattan, according to co-founder and CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack.
The ads, which also carry slogans such as 'Artisans Won't Complain About Work-Life Balance' and 'Artisans Won't Come into Work Hungover,' were designed specifically to provoke. Carmichael-Jack has acknowledged the strategy openly, telling a reporter: 'The biggest play with the campaign is not actually the people who see it from the street. It's when people take pictures and repost it and share it. That's when we go viral.'
Rage Bait with a Price Tag
The campaign was not just controversial by accident. Artisan's earlier marketing efforts used softer slogans such as 'Be more productive' and 'Upskill with AI,' but they failed to gain widespread attention. The company then deliberately pivoted toward shock value. Carmichael-Jack decided that stoking people's fears about being replaced by AI would almost certainly hit a nerve.
It worked, at least by their own metrics. The campaign generated tens of millions of impressions, hundreds of news articles and, by Carmichael-Jack's account, thousands of death threats. Carmichael-Jack told a reporter the company spent less than $50,000 (approximately £37,500) on placements across Manhattan, including in Times Square and along the High Line. The earned media value far exceeded that spend, with the company claiming hundreds of millions of online impressions from the New York rollout alone.
Sanders Weighs In
The backlash has not been limited to anonymous commenters. US Senator Bernie Sanders responded directly on X, writing: 'Great idea. One simple question: How will those displaced workers survive when there are no jobs or income for them?'
On Reddit, the reaction was equally sharp. One post showing a Times Square billboard drew comments including 'Rip them down' and 'Vandalising has never felt so right.' Labour advocates have also taken note, with Emory University law professor Ifeoma Ajunwa, author of 'The Quantified Worker', saying 'Campaigns like this force us to confront our attitudes towards human workers.'
The Irony Behind the Slogan
Despite the provocative messaging, Artisan itself has continued to hire humans at pace. The company employs 35 people and was looking to hire another 22, including in sales roles. Carmichael-Jack addressed the contradiction directly, telling a reporter: 'No, which is ironic, because we did the billboards that said, stop hiring humans, but that was mostly just for attention.'
This is so dystopian
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 15, 2026
“Stop Hiring Humans” billboards are being put up from San Francisco to New York City
The company behind the ads is a San Francisco based startup that builds virtual artificial intelligence sales reps
“The Era of AI Employees Is Here”
This particular… pic.twitter.com/LGiMtNpWYv
The CEO has since offered a more measured explanation of the campaign's intent in a company blog post published on 2 May 2026. He wrote: '"Stop hiring humans" isn't a sentence about humans at large, it's a sentence about a category of work. The category, in our case, is the worst part of cold outbound: the email blasting, the template churn, the list-building tedium.'
With 71 per cent of Americans concerned that AI will permanently put humans out of work as of 2025, Artisan's campaign has landed in the middle of one of the most charged debates in modern labour politics. Ajunwa has argued that campaigns like this one force a reckoning with attitudes toward human workers that policy and corporate communication have so far avoided. The debate over AI displacement, and how governments should respond to it, remains unresolved.
