An advertising campaign by Helsinki's mass transit company Metropolitan Area Transport has raised eyebrows as well as criticism, due to its use of an AI-generated and animated image.
Over the past few weeks, the ad has appeared on screens in buses and trams, as well as on social media.
It shows what appears to be a grey-bearded man in a bright yellow jacket whose facial expression changes into a smile.
The ad copy, roughly translated, reads: "No, not only boomers work for us".
But neither the man nor his grin is actually real, as the image was generated by artificial intelligence.
According to the company's communications unit chief, Ulla Paukku, the firm has received between 20 and 30 direct messages about the ad, while it has generated a good deal of attention on social media.
"The most critical comments raised concerns that the use of artificial intelligence would eliminate jobs," she explained.
Other complaints addressed environmental responsibility issues, as well as the fact that the advert did not include minorities.
According to Svenska Yle, which originally reported about the matter, the company also used AI generated material in its recruitment advertising last year — but no one seemed to mind then.
This year, the ad campaign's graphic designer wanted to try animating the image. According to Paukku, the intention was to make an otherwise humorous campaign even more exaggerated.
So the company agreed with the graphic designer, thinking it offered a chance to develop the designer's AI skills.
"Artificial intelligence is still part of all of our lives in different ways," Paukku explained.
But she did not anticipate the amount of criticism that decision would generate.
Hundreds of applicants
So far, the company has received more than 400 job applications for 23 vacant summer positions in the capital region.
Many critics of the ad campaign presumed that the company used AI to save money and avoid hiring a real graphic designer, but that was not the case, according to Paukku.
"On the contrary, we wanted to give our external graphic designer an opportunity to try out AI," she explained.
The amount of criticism the experiment generated surprised her, and now she has realized that people find AI annoying and that the general consensus seems to be anti-AI.
She has discussed the criticism with the graphic designer and drawn conclusions together with her team.
"It was the first time we tried this, but it will most certainly be the last, at least for a very long time," Paukku said.
Other concerns
Other critics of the campaign had environmental concerns, blaming the company for not taking into account how much of a negative impact that the use of AI has on climate change.
Artificial intelligence requires a vast amount of computer processing, work that is largely carried out at giant data centres — which require a good deal of energy.
But on this point, Paukku disagreed.
"Since this was our first AI experiment with moving images, I find it hard to believe that this one campaign has done more damage to the climate. Most of us use AI in some form anyway," she said.
However, at least so far, no one has complained about the campaign's "boomer" jab, which could be perceived as discriminating against older workers, according to Paukku.
Svenska Yle suggested to Paukku that the ad could suggest that the company doesn't value older employees as much as younger ones.
"That's not the case, they are valuable to us, as the majority of our employees are in that age bracket. Our company would not be able to function without us boomers," Paukku said.
According to her, the whole idea behind the recruitment campaign was to brighten up the company's image, which could otherwise be perceived as an engineering-heavy, drab workplace.
