Watching an ad for an AI product with the tagline “the first AI built to take your jobs” feels right out of a Black Mirror episode, crafted to induce outrage. But for some startups vying for clicks, that’s exactly the point.
In the latest product launch video by Canadian-founded startup Orchid, two former colleagues stand together on a lunch break discussing Keiki, Orchid’s new AI agent that can answer customer questions autonomously. “This thing’s going to take your f*cking job,” one character says to his friend, a founder. “That’s the point,” the founder replies, seemingly unbothered by the implication.
Adam Wazzan, Orchid
“I’m a firm believer that if you get the attention but you have a terrible product, you’re not going to sustain that attention.”
This is just the latest marketing video posted by Orchid, which has attracted attention for the quasi-dystopian scenarios in its ads. In the best-known one, the main character uses Orchid’s AI agent to intervene in her relationship when her not-so-proactive boyfriend forgets the couple’s anniversary. The agent texts the boyfriend reminders and sets up a perfect evening via iMessage—no advance planning or emotional thought required. The video captured the attention of 21 million viewers on X in August before it was taken down due to a music copyright issue
Orchid’s product is not meant to mediate romantic relationships. Instead, it’s an AI agent that can be texted through iMessage and acts as more of a professional executive assistant. But in an interview with BetaKit in August, Orchid co-founder Adam Wazzan clarified that the marketing intent was, above all, to leave a lasting impression.
“Someone asked me: what was your plan with this?” Wazzan said. “I told him, ‘Do you know what Orchid is?’ He said, ‘Probably not, but I can never forget what Orchid did.’ That’s exactly the point.”
“We think it’s very dystopian, as a lot of people call it, to have an agent in your relationship,” Wazzan added.
The Y Combinator-backed startup is part of a crop of companies indexing heavily on outrage-driven virality, even when the content of the launch video doesn’t necessarily match their actual product.
A graduate of YC’s spring 2025 cohort, Orchid was founded by Wazzan, who’s based in Vancouver, and Nizar Abi Zaher, who’s originally from Ottawa. The company, which began with an open-source email inbox called Zero, raised $2 million USD ($2.7 million CAD) in 2025, led by 1984 Ventures.
Even though Wazzan sees Orchid as a tool for people to deal with their work emails, he said the company’s data shows that “people are actually treating it like a relationship because they’re so used to texting their loved ones, friends, or family.”
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People developing intimate relationships with AI chatbots has become a problem, in some cases leading to psychiatric conditions. Wazzan claimed the company has “guardrails” to flag potentially dangerous content, while preserving data privacy.
Wazzan traced the idea for the relationship-focused ad back to Cluely’s launch video, which made waves with a similar concept about using AI to mediate human relationships. Titled A cheating tool for literally everything, the gimmick was that Cluely’s AI could help users “cheat” on a date by telling them exactly what to say—corrupting human connection but allowing the user to pass the test. Crucially, Cluely sells that “desktop overlay” AI product as an undetectable meeting assistant, mainly for work and professional uses, not dates.
But to Wazzan, Orchid was different—not just getting attention for the sake of it, but to market a good product. “This was more of a branding and an ideology demonstration… where people will talk about Orchid, remember Orchid, and prepare them for the next launches,” he said. “It’s part of a bigger, bigger plan.”
“It’s part of a bigger, bigger plan.”
Adam Wazzan, Orchid
Orchid’s videos are part of a larger trend of early-stage startups making cinematic, eye-catching launch announcements, including PostHog, Pocket, and General Intelligence Company. But with the proliferation of ads that follow similar script patterns, not all investors are impressed.
Lulu Cheng Meservey, founder of Rostra and a Shopify board member, called out the rise in “fake videos” in a podcast interview in August: “Half of them, you go to the engagement—it’s completely fake,” she claimed.
Other founders have suggested that there’s an entire cottage industry surrounding these launch videos, with certain companies charging as much as $17,000 to help create a viral launch video, and more than double to provide an influencer campaign—including bots engaging with the posts—to grow view count. Notably, replies to that X post are rife with users pitching their own launch-video services.
Despite the controversy, well-produced social media video appears to continue to be an effective marketing strategy. Orchid’s latest product video for Keiki, a conversational AI agent product that integrates into Slack, Telegram, email, and iMessage, has 46,000 views on X and counting. “I’m a firm believer that if you get the attention but you have a terrible product, you’re not going to sustain that attention,” Wazzan said.
Feature image courtesy Orchid.
The post Why “dystopian” ads are becoming a deliberate startup marketing strategy first appeared on BetaKit.