“Lazy and soulless”: Students outraged by university’s AI-generated advertisements

“Literally training designers and artists but will make AI slop instead of giving us an opportunity to do our jobs.”  

As a university with a creative arts college, Massey students feel it’s bad taste to have AI-generated ads circulating on social media. 

Massey’s research groups, SHORE and Whariki, used ads featuring AI-generated characters wearing uni merch. The campaign aimed to recruit rangatahi aged 16-24 for research into the impact of alcohol advertising on social media.   

The decision to use AI over student-made content was met with backlash after Massive invited students to share their thoughts on Instagram.

Mercy Attridge, a Fine Arts student said, “For a university that literally has a whole campus for arts and design to draw from that’s especially lazy and soulless”. 

Many students felt the university was cutting costs, pointing to notorious staff and course cuts over recent year.  

“I think they’re doing it for the same reason most corporations have latched onto AI image generation, it’s just quick and cheap.” 

Psychology student Quinn Cassidy called the move disrespectful to Massey’s creative arts community, and felt could even dissuade students from studying a creative degree. 

“Why bother spending the time and money to learn how to do design and animation properly when the institution who teaches those things doesn’t seem to show an interest in those skills,” Cassidy said.  

Massey's College of Creative Arts features degrees such as Design, Screen Arts, Fine Arts, and Music. The Screen Arts degree has a major in Animation.   

“It’s lazy and their shooting themselves in the foot by showing artists they don’t care about their work.” 

A university spokesperson defended the decision, “AI was used as a tool within the broader creative process, not as a replacement for human creativity and strategic thinking.” 

They said the use of AI was partly to avoid using real people or alcohol imagery, which can create challenges on social media and raise ethical concerns.  

As students suspected, they confirmed AI was used for budget reasons, as well as time and successful results from an earlier campaign. 

They said the ads used a mix of AI and non-AI content, created in partnership with a social media agency.

The spokesperson said the campaign strategy and overall creative direction came from the agency’s social media team, which included a current Massey student.  

Many students said it was unfair for the university to limit student’s AI use, but then use it for their own work.  

Livvy Findlater, Political Science student said, “For a university to actively denounce the validity of a students work because of AI and then use it themselves to promote the uni is insanely hypocritical”.  

“They pride themselves on teaching students how to think and produce creative works without plagiarising others work and then go ahead and do it themselves”.  

Chemistry student Moana Moss said, “As students, we shouldn't be using AI and should be engaging critically to complete our work — but the uni gets to use AI themselves? Ridiculous.”  

“I think it's easier for them, like they can have someone just chuck prompts into a generator and move on, instead of meaningfully engaging with someone/a team to create their ideas ethically.”