In the past few days, some posts on LinkedIn and Twitter it goes viral after one of the most talked about AI companies in San Francisco suddenly disappeared from LinkedIn: Artisan AI.
The company’s LinkedIn page, individual employee profiles, and posts from executives all display a “This post cannot be displayed” message.
The startup has been banned from the site, Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack confirmed to TechCrunch. However, after working on LinkedIn for the past two weeks – and dealing with the social network’s problems – Artisan is now restored.
“Every startup always has some things they fall back on (from things) they did before,” Carmichael-Jack said.
Contrary to rumors in the viral post, LinkedIn did not ban the company because its AI agent was a spam user. LinkedIn, however, denied the startup used LinkedIn’s name on its website and also said the company used data brokers who hacked the site without permission, Carmichael-Jack said. Collecting data is a Violating LinkedIn’s terms of service.
Artisan AI graduated from startup accelerator Y Combinator and became one of the busiest startups in San Francisco through a “Stop hiring human” billboard. around town. Artisan offers an AI agent called Ava that performs outbound sales by finding and contacting potential customers. LinkedIn is a valuable turf for outbound marketers – human and, increasingly, AI.
When a couple of LinkedIn users seem to notice Artisan’s ban was about a week agoat shipment and tweets things are really picking up steam this week.
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Carmichael-Jack explained that LinkedIn “the enforcement team reached us, and they basically limited our account completely, so we disappeared from the platform when they examined it, which is not good. But it’s kind of funny, because if we are limited, our lead flow suddenly starts inching up every day. And I think it’s because, obviously, many people.”
As a founder who loves a good guerrilla marketing scheme, he jokes, “I hope we do it on purpose.”
The truth is that he was surprised to get an email from LinkedIn on Friday evening, December 19, just before the Christmas holidays. Carmichael-Jack described the team handling the ban as helpful and responsive, although they are also anonymous and can only be accessed via email.
To the satisfaction of LinkedIn, Artisan removed all mention of LinkedIn from its website. It uses the name to compare some data features to LinkedIn. CEOs also get a crash course in verifying third-party vendors, to ensure that their data partners are operating in line with LinkedIn policies.
While Carmichael-Jack is happy to return to the Microsoft-owned social network, he downplayed how it would damage the booted off, saying very little of the data Artisan uses comes from the site. They will also release a new version of the agent that is more autonomous and can use more channels to contact prospects.
“We can get around anything. We started calling as a channel in a few months – calling out,” so if LinkedIn’s ban can’t be reversed, “it won’t be the end of the world,” he said.
Interestingly, LinkedIn is not a direct competitor. They launched their first AI agent last year called Hiring Assistantbut focus on recruiting. However, LinkedIn going nuclear on Artisan could signal that a sales agent may be in the pipeline. LinkedIn did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
In any case, Artisan’s general ban can be seen as a warning to all agent players looking for data sources: Big Tech is watching.