The Anti-A.I.-Ad Ad Campaign
Ambiguity is generally not welcome on the subway. Are those seats empty for a neutral reason or an unpleasant reason? Is the person sitting across from me dangerous or just eccentric? That stain is . . . what, exactly? But one sweltering noontime at the West Fourth Street station, three flights down on the Brooklyn-bound B-D-F-M platform, ambiguity was the point. Two comedians, Harris Alterman and Dave Ross, were taking videos of themselves hanging big print advertisements for nonexistent tech companies on the back and sides of an abandoned newsstand. The ads conveyed just enough Silicon Valley messianism to be believable, and just enough absurdity to be funny. Or maybe it was the other way around? One read “UnderwAIr: Panties that think.” Another depicted a gold coffin engraved with a dollar sign. The copy: “Grieving? Trade on it. WakeMarket.”
It was Alterman and Ross’s second time pulling this stunt. A video of an earlier round of fake subway tech ads had gone viral in June, earning more than five million views on Instagram. (The first batch was even more absurd: “What if forks were spoons? Cutlery.ai” and “We put the Q in QR1777. FiveTable.”) Today, the collaborators were dressed identically in black shorts and white T-shirts that read “AI.CONGLOMERATE,” the pretend parent company for their pretend roster of startups. The pair had a lot on their plate: not only shooting the video but also prepping for a happening at the newsstand, which Al Mullen, a friend and a fellow-comedian, was transforming into a kind of art installation (with the M.T.A.’s blessing and a grant from an organization funding small projects to improve the city). Alterman and Ross were going to take it over one Saturday for a fake-A.I.-palooza.
The ads were printed on large vinyl sheets, and Alterman and Ross were hanging them with low-tech loops of duct tape. (Each ad is a one-off that Alterman and Ross remove when they’re done; the jokes live online, not on subway walls.) It wasn’t hard work, but the platform’s kiln-like conditions sapped their stamina, as well as the tape’s stickiness. People waiting for trains seemed not quite sure how to take the ads. A man with dreadlocks contemplated the promise of “the world’s first wearable AI grandfather.” (This was a parody of an actual product, a talking A.I. pendant called Friend that retails for two hundred and forty-nine dollars.) Was an A.I. grandfather something the man might want? “Get the fuck out,” he responded when asked.
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Alterman, thirty-four, and Ross, forty-three, were friends from the comedy circuit before they collaborated. They look a bit alike, both with beards and thoughtful demeanors, but Alterman is marginally more hirsute and possesses an unexpectedly high-pitched laugh, whereas Ross wears glasses and is more voluble. Both have worked techy jobs—Alterman as a social-media manager, and Ross as a website designer. The fake ad campaign germinated about a year ago, when Alterman began noticing subway ads for A.I. companies that annoyed him with their promises to make existence easier, even frictionless. The idea seemed to be that “eventually you do nothing,” he said. “Your life lives itself.” Another quirk he noticed: the ads were often impenetrable to non-techies. “They all use the same words,” he said. “It’s the same voice, which I’ve called slop voice.” He and Ross compiled a long list of terms they’d spotted in the wild—“prompt,” “next gen,” “merging,” “deck,” “one click”—and from there “we basically just do Mad Libs, where we put different words in different orders until it makes us laugh.”
“Blank plus blank equals blank—that’s one of our favorites,” Ross said.
“From blank to blank in just one blank,” Alterman added. He claimed that they’d come up with their first batch of ads in an hour.
Ross, who’d executed the designs, called that an exaggeration, but maybe not by much. “It was fast, for sure,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
They didn’t have a goal for the project, aside from being funny, but among the millions amused by the initial video were several actual tech companies that approached the comedians about working for them. “One of them floated a very high number, a five-figure number,” Ross said. “And it was a moral quandary even thinking about it, because I very much want a job. My financial situation is scarier than it’s ever been. And this A.I. company wasn’t the worst of them. I don’t think their app itself is bad for humanity necessarily, but that entire world disgusts me.” He and Alterman talked the deal over and consulted friends. “Literally everyone was, like, ‘Dude, take the money,’ ” Ross continued. “But then it ended up not being an offer, so we didn’t have to worry.” Exhale. Faustian bargain averted. “But I would have taken the money,” Ross added.
“I’m glad we didn’t have to decide,” Alterman said. ♦