Equinox Channels Anti-AI Rage in Jarring New Ad Campaign

Next week, drivers may do a double take when they see giant billboards on Sunset Boulevard of a three-breasted woman or an unrealistically muscular Venice Beach body builder. Though we have become inured to the flood of AI images and filters on our small screens, this is part of a new campaign from the lifestyle brand, Equinox. Each billboard (examples shown below) consists of a pair of shots. On the left of one such billboard is a startling reality-bending image of former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau coiled around a stripper pole. Another billboard features an echo of the much-memed deepfake of Pope Francis in a stylish puffer coat. On the right of both billboards is an, evidently real, often sweaty, intimidatingly fit person in workout gear. Across both is the tagline, “Question Everything but Yourself,” followed by the now familiar “Equinox It’s not Fitness. It’s Life.”

The campaign follows those of other companies — among them Heineken, Polaroid and Cadbury — whose ads have sought to leverage widespread public animus against AI by celebrating humanity over robotic connection. Even as AI infiltrates many facets of human activity, advertising it — or using to create ads — has frequently been met with anger from consumers. Consider the defacing of NYC subway ads for the AI-enabled wearable “Friend,” or the recent removal of misleading J. Crew Instagram postings created by AI. A similar outcry has met AI-driven ads by Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

But Krish Menon, founder of Angry Gods, the agency working with Equinox on this campaign, maintains that such examples are not a takedown of the technology itself, just bad use of it. “This isn’t man vs AI at all — we use AI. It’s about the idea of culture losing its grip on what’s real, and fitness as one of the last places of truth,” he said. “You can fake looking fit but not being fit. You can do a lot in photos, but you won’t feel better.”

Menon believes the ad reflects this moment in time. “It was too early in ’25 and it will be too late in ’27 — this is the one time,” he feels. “Now you can Ozempic yourself to a skinny body, but it won’t make you feel fit; you have to work at it. We wanted to highlight this moment.”

While AI imagery has vastly improved in the last few years — nightmarish, six-fingered hallucinations are largely a thing of the past — Menon points out that distorted images are still very much a part of what we are being bombarded with daily.

“These falsehoods start, have shelf lives and then many take on subcultural lives of their own,” he said.  “If there is a photo of someone on a dating profile sipping champagne in St. Moritz but he was never there, is that catfishing? We are seeing a hunger for experience that isn’t fake, and Equinox can give that.”

Bindu Shah, who left Tory Burch last year to become chief marketing officer and chief digital officer at Equinox, said it’s in the brand’s DNA to be bold and provocative. “I wanted to make sure Equinox is responding to the culture, but what I love is that this is about being grounded and disciplined. It acknowledges how noisy and fabricated things are, but it lands on something you can trust: yourself.”

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She acknowledges that, in the current climate, such ad campaigns open themselves up to controversy.

“We know that there is always risk,” she said. “What I love is that it’s ultimately optimistic.”