This Las Vegas company launched an anti-AI campaign in San Francisco

Billboards have been cropping up in San Francisco since October that read: “Humanity had a good run” or “I can’t stay silent any longer.” This Las Vegas business is behind them.

Six months ago Nathan Strum, CEO of Las Vegas-based receptionist service Abby Connect, traveled to San Francisco for a tech conference. While there, he noticed billboards were littered with advertisements for AI services but one struck a chord.

“I started noticing a campaign that talked about firing humans,” said Strum. “It was so bold, and it was so gut-wrenching.”

What he is referring to is Artisan’s “Stop Hiring Humans” billboards. Artisan is a San Francisco-based company that offers outbound tools for companies, specifically an “AI employee.”

“What struck me was that, typically, when we’re talking about AI in a public-facing arena, we’re talking about it helping humans and productivity,” said Strum. “Whereas this was really coming out and just really saying: ‘No, AI is going to replace humans.’”

That billboard was the catalyst for Abby Connect’s three-phase campaign launched across Silicon Valley called “Stop Firing Humans.”

About Abby Connect

Inside Abby Connect’s office on North Durango Drive is buzzing with humans. Founded in 2005, Strum relocated to Las Vegas from St. Louis to start Abby Connect, which offers virtual receptionist services.

“Our culture is all about receptionists. We are a company of receptionists. I started as a receptionist,” said Strum.

Clients, which Strum said are predominantly small businesses, attorneys, tax accountants and home service providers, contract with Abby Connect for their receptionist services. Originally, the company offered human receptionist services, but starting in June it launched an AI receptionist product.

Clients can either pay for human, AI or a hybrid receptionist model, which offers both. Although the AI receptionist has an automatic fail over system where if a caller is frustrated, has to repeat themselves or asks for a human, one of their receptionists will take the call at no cost to the client.

Currently, the company employs around 50 to 60 receptionists and has around 1,000 clients.

The campaign

The first phase of Abby Connect’s billboard campaign started in October. Anonymous billboards and bus shelter ads with black backgrounds and white lettering popped up in San Francisco. They read: “I can’t stay silent any longer” and “Humanity had a good run.”

The bottom of the signs advertised the website DearWorld.ai. When visited, it featured an anonymous letter titled “AI: Scalpel or Dagger?”

“AI is potentially the sharpest instrument humanity has ever built. In steady hands, it’s a scalpel: precise, careful, lifesaving. In careless hands, it’s a deadly weapon,” the website stated

At the end of the essay, readers were instructed to return to the website on Nov. 24, saying “I’ll reveal my identity.”

Phase two used “rage bait,” said Strum. Bus shelters ads advertised a fake app called Nurture OS, where supposedly parents could outsource parenting skills to AI.

On the advertisement was a QR code and if scanned, would take users to a website for the fake app. The bottom of the website read: “If You Want This App, You’re A Bad Parent” and redirected readers to the campaign webpage.

Strum said the reception to the fake app was “the most interesting part,” with people believing it was real and participating in conversations online, despite the clear message at the bottom.

Phase three, as promised, was the reveal.

“This was really coming out and saying: ‘No, AI isn’t going to replace humans,’” said Strum.

Now, Strum is not anti-AI. In fact, Strum was at a tech conference because his company had launched its AI receptionist product to clients in June. Instead, he is against the notion that AI will replace humans.

“We don’t hate AI, but we do believe that humans plus AI is the way of the future,” said Strum. “AI can be used in a responsible way.”

Some of the imagery currently being used for phase three, as the campaign is over at the end of January, is a fully wrapped bus with the “humanity had a good run” wording, but torn to reveal Abby Connect branding underneath.

In total, at any given time, Abby Connect had around five billboards and 30 to 40 bus shelters ads throughout the campaign’s run, costing the company somewhere in the hundred thousand-dollar range. Overall, Strum said the amount of people who interacted with the campaign is “in the hundreds of thousands.”

Strum said people who followed the whole campaign responded positively.

“I was surprised,” said Strum about overall perception. “ It landed in a way that said: ‘Hey, no, this is a company that really values humans.”

While the campaign has given Abby Connect more visibility and potential business growth, Strum said “that wasn’t the goal.”

“The goal was really to, you know, become part of the conversation. More of an awareness campaign,” said Strum. “It’s hard to say that this campaign was responsible for new business, and it’s too early to tell, but that wasn’t the goal.”

Contact Emerson Drewes at edrewes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @EmersonDrewes on X.