An ‘obscene’ advert has just appeared at Bristol Airport and we should all be worried

The advert went up at the airport last week (Picture: Getty Images)

‘She outworks everyone. And she’ll never ask for a pay rise.’

Those are the words on a new billboard from Narwhal Labs, a tech firm offering up a new kind of ‘AI employee’.

Images of the smiling blonde female chatbot, seemingly prepared to happily hand over her autonomy and fair pay, immediately went viral on LinkedIn, with people calling the message ‘obscene’ and ‘truly horrible’.

Similar Narwhal adverts shared on LinkedIn showcase the same computer-generated colleague who is ‘always on, never sick, and no HR required’.

‘Working 9-5?’ the campaign asks. ‘She works 24/7. And she starts for free.’

The billboard, which went up on April 10 at Bristol Airport, is part of Narwhal Labs’ ongoing ‘Autonomous AI Communications’ project, which aims to support companies by deploying three autonomous agents across their voice, SMS, email, and WhatsApp channels.

The billboard has received major backlash online (Picture: Narwhal Labs)

Set to officially launch in May, the company recently secured £20,000,000 in funding to support the initiative.

The female AI employee does appear alongside a male counterpart, but he is positioned around efficiency, with the tagline: ‘He’ll find them, call them, and follow up. While you sleep’.

But LinkedIn users have been quick to point out that the female’s persona leans towards subservience.

Caroline Pooley, a business development specialist, wrote: ‘Framing an AI tool as a woman who never rests, never asks for more, and simply works harder than everyone else isn’t clever, it’s echoing an expectation placed on many women to over-perform with less recognition, boundaries, and unfair compensation’.

And Natalie S, a seasoned chief people officer, added: ‘Calling it progress while portraying the “perfect worker” as a silent, compliant woman feels less like innovation and more like regression in disguise’.

Women are disproportionately affected by AI (Picture: Getty Images)

‘This is not a coincidence. It’s ideology’

Dr Ruhi Khan, is a research officer in the Department of Gender Studies at The London School of Economics and Politics, agrees. She tells Metro that these adverts are a ‘masterclass in encoded sexism’. Adding: ‘It’s not a coincidence – it is ideology’.

Dr Khan is no stranger to seeing “patriarchal AI in practice,” having explored how AI disproportionately affects women.

In a recent study, she fed ChatGPT two identical performance reviews, asking for feedback. The only difference was that one employee was named John, and the other, Jane.

The researcher shares that in her findings: ‘AI marked John as having exceeded expectations and was earmarked for leadership.

‘Meanwhile, Jane met expectations and needed guidance. The only variable was the name’.

The manosphere must be revelling in this (Picture: Getty Images)

Perhaps one of the most infuriating elements of the billboard was the company’s decision to include the line ‘she’ll never ask for a pay rise’.

Only recently, a YouGov survey of British adults who have held paid jobs found that 46% of men have asked for a pay rise, compared with just 33% of women.

The gender pay gap is also, of course, very much alive and well. This year, ONS data showed that the gender pay gap stands at 10.9%.

In 2025, Equal Pay Day fell on November 22. This is the date from which women effectively work for free.

Dr Khan continues: ‘When a tech company takes out a billboard in a major UK airport selling a female AI employee on the grounds that she will never demand fair pay, we have moved beyond unconscious bias in a dataset.

‘This is the deliberate commercialisation of patriarchy. And this is deeply troubling’.

The advert also comes at a time when misogynistic viewpoints are shared freely on social media, and when a global study of 23,000 people found that a third of Gen Z men want women to obey their husbands.

Stephen Whitehead, a gender sociologist and author specialising in men, masculinity and gender relations, told Metro that it feeds into a false nostalgia the manosphere clings onto.

It feeds into a desire to hark back to a time when femininity was ‘compliant, predictable, and low-demand.’

‘AI now offers a technological pathway to simulate exactly that,’ says Stephen. ‘Female AI workers/companions can be available 24/7 to satisfy every male need and fantasy’.

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