- Klarna's CEO came under fire after saying AI would enable in-house marketing teams to do more with “half the size.”
- Sebastian Simiatkowski said Klarna was “reducing spending on photographers, image banks and marketing agencies.”
- Klarna has previously said its AI assistant is doing the work of 700 humans.
Klarna's CEO appeared to spark a stir on social media with a post about how the company is using AI to cut costs and save millions of dollars by offloading marketing tasks previously performed by human employees to AI.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski tweeted on Tuesday that the fintech company could save $10 million this year, in part because generative AI will enable it to produce more images, faster, and with a much smaller in-house marketing team.
“We are spending less on photographers, image banks and marketing agencies,” he wrote. “Our in-house marketing team is half the size it was last year, yet our production is up!”
The “pay later” service has also cut external marketing agency costs by 25%, instead using AI image-generation tools like Midjourney, OpenAI's DALL-E and Adobe's Firefly to “eliminate the need for stock imagery,” Siemiatkowski added.
He also wondered aloud about how AI will affect those working in the creative industries and marketing.
“But I think: What happens to the marketing and creative industries, where there's a lot of talent? Of course, you still need big, amazing, highly creative campaigns, but a lot of the day-to-day work of a creative business can be done much faster, easier and at a fraction of the cost using AI.”
His comments drew immediate backlash, with some commenters replying to his tweet, bashing him and calling his comments “brutal.”
The largely negative social media reaction to the CEO's post highlights the tensions and concerns many workers have about how companies are implementing AI into their employees' daily work to improve productivity and cut costs, and the impact it will have on them.
“If they still had a bigger marketing team they probably would have advised them not to post this,” one person said.
“Bragging about firing half your marketing team is so gross,” another user added, along with a clown emoji.
Klarna laid off about 700 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, in May 2022. The following year, the company reported its first profitable quarter in four years. Employee numbers fell by about 23% by the end of 2023, according to company filings.
Asked for comment, a Klarna spokesperson said: “We believe it is important to highlight the impact AI is having and provide real, concrete examples and data to stimulate positive discussion.”
Other commenters said the AI-generated image looked bad, with one person saying it “looks awful.”Simiatkowski attached an image to his tweet showing hair curlers in a bouquet of flowers.
While online reaction to the CEO appeared to be mostly negative, that wasn't the case for most.
“The creative industry will be able to level up. Instead of creative suites, we'll have entire production studios at our fingertips,” one person wrote. “Great work from the Klarna team!”
Klarna has been focusing on AI for some time now
Szymiatkowski tweeted about Klarna's AI assistant, powered by OpenAI, in February, saying it was doing “the equivalent of 700 full-time agents” by handling customer service inquiries.
“In the longer term, as more companies adopt these technologies, we believe society needs to consider the impact. It may be a positive impact for society as a whole, but we need to consider the impact on the individuals that are affected,” he said at the time.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, Klarna Chief Marketing Officer David Sundstrom said the company needed to be “ultra-efficient” to “become the most forward-thinking marketing organization.”
“Going forward, we will be able to achieve more at a lower cost, or if we decide to increase costs again, which we probably will, we will be able to become even more efficient,” he said.
“On a marketing level, whether we like it or not, whether our creatives and artisans are worried about the future – and in my opinion they really shouldn't be – we as an industry need to recognize the fact that we're in the midst of a major change for marketing and the marketing industry,” the Klarna CMO added.
“Using genAI, we have generated over 1,000 images in the first three months of 2024, reducing our image development cycle from six weeks to just seven days,” Klarna said in a press release issued Tuesday alongside a social media post from its CEO.
Klarna also said its AI assistant is now used for 80% of its in-house copywriting.
