Ai Startup Friend Spent More Than $1m On All Those Subway Ads

In Brief

If you’ve been connected nan New York City subway recently, you’ve astir apt seen stark achromatic ads promoting a wearable AI instrumentality called Friend.

CEO Avi Schiffman told Adweek that nan institution spent much than $1 cardinal connected a run pinch much than 11,000 cards connected subway cars, 1,000 level posters, and 130 urban panels. Some stations, for illustration West 4th Street, are wholly dominated by Friend ads.

“This is nan world’s first awesome AI campaign,” Schiffman said. (There person been different AI ads of questionable effectiveness, but possibly not a people run of this scale.) He described it arsenic “a immense gamble,” adding, “I don’t person overmuch money left.”

Friend’s $129 instrumentality has been controversial, pinch Wired writers precocious criticizing its changeless surveillance and declaring, “I Hate My Friend.” Similarly, immoderate Friend ads person been vandalized pinch messages calling it “surveillance capitalism” and urging spectators to “get existent friends.”

Schiffman said he’s good alert that “people successful New York dislike AI … astir apt much than anyplace other successful nan country,” truthful he deliberately bought ads pinch tons of achromatic abstraction “so that they would socially remark connected nan topic.”

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