Interview | Martin Böhm, Chief Experience Officer at Ottobock

AI-generated images of people — but people with prosthetic limbs or limb differences are often missing from them entirely, or shown in distorted ways. With “Dear AI“, Ottobock, the MedTech company with roots in Berlin (founded in 1919, now headquartered in Duderstadt), has launched a campaign designed to change exactly that — not against AI, but for an AI that represents everyone. Together with Berlin-based PRESENCE Creative Studio and more than 80 brand ambassadors worldwide, Ottobock developed a series of open letters addressed to AI itself — as posters, films, and social media content.

At the heart of the initiative is the "Dear AI Community Library": an open dataset curated by prosthesis users themselves, with technological support from Microsoft. In this interview, Martin Böhm, Chief Experience Officer at Ottobock, talks about how the campaign came together, why representation cannot be a fix applied after the fact but must be built in from the start — and what Berlin's diverse AI ecosystem can contribute to this conversation.