Yes, LinkedIn has banned AI startup Artisan, but now it’s back

In the past few days, several posts have been made LinkedIn and Twitter/X became alarming after one of the most talked about AI companies in San Francisco suddenly disappeared from LinkedIn: Artisan AI.

The company’s LinkedIn page, profiles of each employee, and posts from management all displayed the message “This cannot be viewed”.

The startup was banned from the site, Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack confirmed to TechCrunch. However, after working with LinkedIn over the past two weeks – and addressing concerns about the social network – Artisan is now being reinstated.

“Every startup has some kind of thing that comes back to bite them (from things) they do early on,” Carmichael-Jack said.

Contrary to viral rumors, LinkedIn did not ban the company because its AI agents were spam users. LinkedIn objected to the introduction of the LinkedIn name on its site and said the company was using advertisers who had damaged the site without permission, Carmichael-Jack said. Data scraping is Violation of LinkedIn’s terms of service.

Artisan AI is a graduate of startup accelerator Y Combinator and has become one of the top startups in San Francisco through. His “Stop Hiring” signs have been posted around town. Artisan offers an AI assistant called Ava that outsources tracking and communication with potential customers. LinkedIn is a valuable resource for outbound marketers – people and, increasingly, AI.

While several LinkedIn users seemed to notice Artisan ban about a week agoand documents and tweets about it really picking up steam this week.

Carmichael-Jack explained that “LinkedIn’s security team reached out to us, and they banned our accounts completely, so we disappeared from the platform while they reviewed it, which was not appropriate. But it was funny, because as soon as we were banned, our outflow suddenly started to increase every day.

As an entrepreneur who likes the best way to promote criminals, he joked, “I wish we’d done it on purpose.”

The truth was that he was surprised to receive an email from LinkedIn on Friday evening, December 19, just before the Christmas break. Carmichael-Jack described the team working on the ban as helpful and responsive, although they were anonymous and available by email.

To appease LinkedIn, Artisan has removed all references to LinkedIn from its website. It was using this name to compare some of its features with LinkedIn. The CEO also got a crash course in verifying third-party vendors, ensuring that their contacts are working in accordance with LinkedIn’s policies.

Although Carmichael-Jack is happy to be back on the social network owned by Microsoft, he criticized how the ouster would have been damaging, saying that little of Artisan’s use comes from the site. He is about to release a new type of agent who is independent and can use multiple channels to connect with his target audience.

“We can do any job. We’re introducing calling as a method in a few months – external calling,” so if LinkedIn’s ban couldn’t be reversed, “it wouldn’t be the end of the world,” he said.

Interestingly, LinkedIn is not a direct competitor. It launched its first AI assistant last year called Hiring Assistantbut the purpose is to hire people. However, the fact that LinkedIn went nuclear on Artisan may indicate that the retailer may one day be in its pipeline, too. LinkedIn did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

In any case, Artisan’s public ban can be seen as a warning to all players looking for data sources: Big Tech is watching.