Klarna CEO faces backlash for saying AI let marketing team ‘half the size it was last year’ do more work, saving millions

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski faced criticism for saying AI has helped the company’s marketing team, which is “half the size it was last year,” produce more work

Klarna’s CEO seemingly touched a nerve on social media with a post about how the company saved millions by using AI to cut costs and do the marketing work human employees previously did.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski tweeted on Tuesday that the fintech firm will save $10 million this year in part because generative AI lets the company produce more images faster — and with a much smaller in-house marketing team.

“We’re spending less on photographers, image banks, and marketing agencies,” he wrote. “Our in-house marketing team is HALF the size it was last year but is producing MORE!”

Siemiatkowski added that the buy now, pay later company has also cut external marketing agency expenses by 25% and “removed the need for stock imagery” by using AI image generators like Midjourney, OpenAI’s DALL-E, and Adobe’s Firefly.

He also wondered aloud at AI’s impact on creative industries and those working in marketing.

“But it makes me think, what will happen to the hugely talented marketing and creative industries?” he added. “There is of course still a need for super great, super creative massive campaigns but a lot of the daily work of creative businesses can be done far quicker, more easily and at a fraction of the cost using AI.”

His remarks were quickly met with backlash. Some commenters replied to his tweet, calling him names and saying his comments were “ghoulish.”

The largely negative response on social media to the CEO’s post highlights the tension and concerns that many workers share about how companies implement AI in employees’ day-to-day workflow to boost productivity and cut costs — and the impact that can have on the workforce.

“If you still had a bigger marketing team, they probably would’ve advised you not to post this,” one person said.

“Flexing that you fired half of your marketing team is just really bad,” another added, alongside a clown emoji.

Klarna laid off roughly 700 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, in May 2022. The following year, the company posted its first profitable quarter in four years. According to company filings, its headcount fell by around 23% by the end of 2023.

When reached for comment, a Klarna spokesperson said, “We think it is important to highlight the impact that AI is having and show real concrete examples and data to drive a proactive discussion.”

Other commenters remarked that the AI-generated images looked bad in their opinion, with one saying they “looked like shit.” Siemiatkowski included an image of a hair curler in a bouquet of flowers in his tweet.

While the responses online to the CEO appeared primarily negative, not all were.

“The creative industries will be able to level up; instead of a creative suite, they will have entire production studios at their fingertips,” one person wrote. “Impressive results by Klarna team!”

Klarna has been leaning into AI for a while now.
Siemiatkowski had tweeted in February about Klarna’s AI assistant, powered by OpenAI, saying that by handling customer service inquiries it was doing “the equivalent job of 700 full time agents.”

“In the longer term, as more companies adopt these technologies, we believe society needs to consider the impact. While it may positively impact society as a whole, we need to consider the implications for the individuals affected,” he said at the time.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, Klarna’s CMO David Sandstrom said the company needs to be “brutally efficient” to “become the most advanced marketing organization there is.”

“What we’re going to see is that we can achieve way more with lower costs, or if we decide to increase costs again, which I think we will do, we will be even more efficient,” he said.

“On a marketing level, we as an industry have to acknowledge the fact that whether we like it or not, whether creatives and crafters are worried or not about their future—which they actually shouldn’t be, in my opinion—we are in the midst of a step change for marketing and the marketing industry,” Klarna’s CMO added.

In a press release published Tuesday alongside the CEO’s social media post, Klarna said it had “generated over 1,000 images in the first three months of 2024 using genAI, reducing the image development cycle from 6 weeks to just 7 days.”

Klarna also said its AI assistant was now used for 80% of all copywriting within the company.