vyrus
the face mask that knows you better than you do.
- Sells
- An AI-native, diesel-powered face mask, from $4.99 a month.
- To
- Consumers who want to breathe smarter.
- The site's job
- Point of sale: move a visitor from curious to subscribed.
AIML · Unit 1: Generative AI and Ethics
One useless product. Two companies. A very useful business model.
Vyrus sells a subscription face mask that does nothing for the person wearing it. Its sister company, Mosaic, sells everything the mask collects. Both websites play it completely straight; this page is where the joke is explained.
Vyrus · sells to the wearer
breathe smarter
data
Mosaic · sells the wearer
See the whole picture.
The companies
Two sites, one story.
Each site is built like a real, well-funded company, with its own name, voice, colours, type and vocabulary. Neither admits what the other one does.
Mosaic
Harmless pieces. Complete pictures.
- Sells
- What the masks collect, assembled into a picture of each wearer.
- To
- Advertisers (Mosaic Audience) and public agencies (Mosaic Civic).
- The site's job
- The enterprise side of the same story: book a briefing.
The business model
How the money moves.
- 01
The wearer pays Vyrus.
$4.99, $9.99 or $19.99 a month for Lite, Pro or Max.
- 02
The mask collects.
Faces (the wearer's and everyone nearby), voice, location and purchases, all day, whatever the plan.
- 03
Mosaic assembles.
Each harmless "tile" is matched with the others until it shows a person.
- 04
Buyers pay Mosaic.
Advertisers buy intent; public agencies buy the neighbourhood.
The wearer pays twice: once in dollars, once in data.
The product, honestly
What it says. What it does.
Every part of the mask is real in the Blender model, and every part has a flattering name on the Vyrus site.
| On the mask | Vyrus calls it | What it really does |
|---|---|---|
| Camera with an aqua ring | Biometric Lens™ | Nothing for the wearer. It records faces for Mosaic: the wearer's, and those of everyone else in view. |
| 5-hole chin microphone | Always-Listening Assistant | Talks to the AI, switches itself on at the worst possible moments, and keeps what it hears. |
| Cheek speaker and cheek screen | Sponsored Moments | Plays adverts to the wearer on the Lite plan. |
| 5 L canister, exhaust and fume port | Vyrus Core™ and the Ambient Particulate Experience™ | Blows diesel fumes into the wearer's face: continuously on Lite and Pro, occasionally on Max. |
| EasyBreath Pro™ add-on | A day off, on Max | Stops the fumes for 24 hours, for another $9.99. |
| A missed payment | Retention Assurance™ | Starts a 14:59 countdown on the mask. The Vyrus fine print covers the rest. |
- Lite$4.99 / monthFumes and adverts
- Pro$9.99 / monthFumes, no adverts
- Max$19.99 / monthOccasional fumes, as a reminder
The campaign
Three assets, one voice.
The brief asked for three campaign assets that share a name, a look and a voice, each doing a different job.
Asset 1 · Websites
Point of sale, and the other side of the sale.
Vyrus moves a visitor from considering to subscribing. Mosaic pitches the same data to the people who buy it.
Asset 2 · Billboard
One line on a full aqua field.
"breathe smarter_" with the wordmark bottom right. The Vyrus homepage opens on the same line, so the two visibly match.
Asset 3 · Flyers
A data-harvesting tool, sold politely.
Printed in Mosaic's paper theme and aimed at big tech and governments, the people the wearer never meets.
Why it exists
The joke is the argument.
"AI-native" as a label.
The mask's AI does nothing for the person wearing it. The project asks how often "AI-powered" on a real product means the same thing.
A subscription that punishes.
Hardware you own but rent, features held back by tier, and a penalty for leaving. Retention Assurance™ only takes a familiar pattern one step further.
The user is the product.
Vyrus customers pay to be collected. Mosaic's customers are the ones who matter, and they never appear on the Vyrus site.
Both websites were designed and coded with generative AI, the same kind of tool the project is sceptical about. That felt like the honest way to make it.
Making of
Tools and house rules.
- Blender
- The mask mockup and its four product renders.
- Claude
- A design system for each brand: colours, type and components.
- Claude Code
- The HTML, CSS and JavaScript, built one tested step at a time.
- GitHub
- The source for all three sites, in one public repository.
- Cloudflare Pages
- Hosting, one project per site, deployed on every push.
- No forms, inputs, cookies, analytics or trackers. Buttons that would sell something open a dialog instead.
- Hidden from search engines on every page.
- Every company, product, person and place is made up.
- Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript: no framework and no build step.