A new awareness campaign from Sephora Italy leverages ChatGPT to expose the systemic problem of victim blaming. 

In a trio of ads, women detail harrowing stories of abuse they’ve faced, only to then blame themselves for the violence. Each twist is an example of victim blaming, but the ads go one step further by revealing that they were written by ChatGPT.

“If even AI starts to blame the victims, there is a need for change,” reads the refrain at the end of each spot.

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ChatGPT regurgitated data that it compiled. Herein lies the crux of Sephora’s message: Victim blaming is a pervasive practice so reinforced by society that an impartial AI, when asked to create stories from opinions on the internet, cannot help but reflect it. 

Sephora did exactly this when developing the campaign. In collaboration with Media.Monks Milan, the cosmetics brand told ChatGPT to scour the web for opinions on gender-based violence, and based on that information, strung together narratives from the perspectives of the victims. That each narrative ended with the victim blaming themself drove home Sephora’s point.

The clever concept shows how marketers are growing in their confidence with generative AI. No longer just a way to merely drive wacky brainstorming or generate out-there images, tools like ChatGPT are being incorporated more deeply into creative processes. In Sephora’s case, not only did the bot entirely craft the ad copy, but it also contributed to a sensitive and purpose-driven subject. 

This latter fact seemed unlikely six months ago, when generative AI was still considered a risk to use in consumer-facing ways, and therefore limited mostly to internal use cases. In the second half of the year, though, marketers have found new ways to use the technology, such as to create hypothetical focus groups or craft first-party data plays.

Sephora’s campaign is dubbed “mAI colpevoli,” which is Italian for “never guilty.” Its launch comes on the heels of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (Nov. 25) and is meant to show support for women-focused non-profit Pangea ETS. The campaign is airing on Sephora’s social media accounts.