Last week, the online freelance marketplace Fiverr generated a flood of headlines after it announced an effort to reimagine itself as an “AI-first” company.
According to a published memo from CEO Micha Kaufman, the new-and-improved Fiverr will be “leaner, faster,” with modern AI infrastructure, greater productivity, and “far fewer management layers.” The change will also require a “painful reset,” Kaufman added, that will see 250 people lose their jobs.
Fiverr is just the latest tech company to loudly proclaim its embrace of artificial intelligence this year. It joins Duolingo, Klarna Group, Shopify, and a number of others that have said they are moving at breakneck speed to get ahead of the transformational technology.
In many cases, these companies have employed a similar mix of buzzwords and superlatives to publicly convey the dire urgency with which they believe they must act. Being “AI-first,” it seems, is an existential rallying cry for an adapt-or-die moment.
But what does it actually mean?
If you find yourself unsure, you’re not alone. Despite endless discussions around AI at many workplaces today, close to half of professionals with some knowledge of top company strategies have never even heard the term “AI-first,” according to a new survey conducted exclusively for Fast Company.
And many who do hear it are likely to be skeptical. Although around a third of the survey’s respondents said they’d perceive an AI-first company to be more innovative and efficient, 27% said they’d expect such a company to feel less human, while 25% said being AI-first would probably result in a less enjoyable customer experience.
Concerns about job losses, privacy, and slop
The new research was led by FutureBrand, a brand strategy and design agency, and involved interviews with more than 3,000 “informed professionals”—meaning people who have some degree of awareness about seven or more of the biggest companies ranked by PwC.
The data will be included as part of the forthcoming FutureBrand Index 2025, which launches next month.
The interviews, conducted in June, included a question that defined “AI-first” in a very specific way: a strategy that mandates the integration of AI tools across the workplace, adopted by companies that only hire employees who do work that AI can’t.
Presented with that definition, respondents further expressed a range of concerns around AI-first strategies, including the potential for job losses, data and privacy risks, and the reduced creativity that inevitably comes with AI-generated content—aka “AI slop.”
Other respondents viewed AI-first announcements as a signal that companies are prioritizing “efficiency over ethics,” while still others merely saw them as marketing spin.
The findings indicate that for even the most knowledgeable consumers, AI-first announcements risk causing confusion, misgivings, or even fear, particularly if they are not clearly defined.
“Right now, the phrase ‘AI-first’ is being used by companies with great enthusiasm, but limited clarity,” Jon Tipple, FutureBrand’s chief strategy officer, said in a statement to Fast Company.
Where do we go from here?
Perhaps no company is more familiar with this tricky new terrain than Duolingo. In May, CEO Luis von Ahn shared a memo in which he proclaimed that the language learning app was going AI-first.
The announcement sparked sustained backlash, particularly von Ahn’s assertion that Duolingo would gradually reduce its reliance on contractors who do the types of work AI can do. For months, the company’s social media posts were flooded by trollish comments, with critics often ribbing Duolingo for what they’d perceived as a betrayal of the app’s human translators.
Investors, by contrast, rewarded the move, with Duolingo’s stock soaring 24% after its August earnings report showed eye-popping profit and user growth, an indication to some observers that its bet was paying off.
Still, von Ahn has sought to distance himself from his memo’s least generous interpretations. Speaking at the Fast Company Innovation Festival just last week, he reminded the audience that Duolingo has “not laid off a single full-time employee.”
FutureBrand’s research, which includes responses from people in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, suggests that opinions about AI-first companies are still very much divided, to the extent that they have been formed at all.
For companies looking to draft that next AI-first memo, the findings could be seen as an opportunity or a warning.
“For some, it signals progress through modern thinking and streamlined operations,” Tipple said. “But for others, AI-first means something colder: the removal of human connection, empathy and even a job threat.”
No comments