In the race to build brands around AI assistants, the stakes are higher than empathy. This week's debut brand marketing campaigns from OpenAI and Anthropic made that clear, and in retrospect, cast Perplexity's earlier campaign in a sharper light. These aren't brands trying to be relatable. They're trying to normalize a seismic shift in human-machine interaction. As Neil Barrie, co-founder and global CEO of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand, put it: "All of them are building brands around weapons grade power."
The dating app Feeld has revealed that mentions of the film studio A24 have increased 65% year-on-year in members' profiles over the past 12 months. Feeld caters for those seeking alternative relationship choices and overindexes for women and non-binary people, bisexuals and pansexuals, yet it reports that the majority of members whose profiles mention A24 are cis-gender male, straight and aged 26-30.