Artisan removes disputed This is fine ads after settlement with KC Green

Artisan removed ads in the New York City subway and on some bus placements in San Francisco after settling a dispute with KC Green over a version of his “This is fine” webcomic. Green said the parties “reached a settlement pretty quick,” and his original post criticizing the campaign was deleted as part of the agreement.

The contested ad borrowed Green’s recognizable dog, set it amid flames and rewrote the speech bubble to say, “My pipeline is on fire.” It then urged commuters to “Hire Ava the AI BDR,” promoting Artisan’s Ava product, an AI-powered business development representative. The campaign turned a familiar internet image into sales copy, a move that put Artisan squarely in the now-familiar tension between homage, advertising and appropriation.

Green said he had been hearing about the ad from multiple people and that it was “not anything [I] agreed to.” He also called it “stolen like AI steals” and urged people to vandalize it if they saw it. In a later post on Bluesky, he said, “The original post I made about artisan and their advertisement featuring my work has been deleted, due them working with me to take down the ads in the NYC subway and on some bus ads in San Fran.” Green said he would not comment further because of the agreement, and told TechCrunch he was frustrated at having to think about the American court system instead of focusing on his comics.

Artisan initially said it had “a lot of respect for Green and his work” and that it was reaching out directly. Later, founder and chief executive Jaspar Carmichael-Jack said the two sides had come to an agreement. The company’s earlier “Stop Hiring Humans” billboards had already made provocation part of its brand strategy, and Carmichael-Jack had described those ads as mainly intended to generate attention.

The settlement lands as AI companies increasingly test how far they can push cultural shorthand for commercial gain. Artisan, which TechCrunch said raised $25 million in April 2025, is now facing a clear signal from one artist: borrowing a famous meme may be cheap attention, but it is not a substitute for consent.