AI startup Friend spent more than $1M on all those subway ads

In Brief

If you’ve been connected the 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 the institution spent much than $1 cardinal connected a run with much than 11,000 cards connected subway cars, 1,000 level posters, and 130 urban panels. Some stations, similar West 4th Street, are wholly dominated by Friend ads.

“This is the world’s archetypal large 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 wealth left.”

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

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

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