To combat the high number of young New Zealanders drowning due to risky behaviour, we created the Swim Reaper – the world’s first anti-influencer. A darkly comedic character who ironically encourages 15-24-year-old New Zealanders to be as dumb as possible around the water, in the hopes they’ll drown. Disguised as black comedy, his posts are actually highly targeted, data-driven warnings.

The Swim Reaper hit the beaches armed with a steampunk-inspired drowning prediction machine, called Bertha. But behind the chugging engine, turning cogs and smoke plumes was a working artificial intelligence bot, designed to predict where and when conditions would be the most likely to result in a drowning. The bot combined 40 years of historic Water Safety data with variable conditions which make drownings more likely – weather forecasts, tides, historically dangerous locations and data points such as local access to alcohol. The bot would then predict day-by-day where and when the most dangerous swimming conditions would be.

Armed with these predictions, the Swim Reaper created Instagram posts that appeared, on the surface, to be his usual brand of black comedy, but were actually incredibly specific and timely safety warnings.

His popularity soared, earning him a following of over 450,000. But, more importantly, he took a group that disproportionately made up more than one-third of New Zealand’s drownings and drove their numbers down to record lows. In fact, last summer, drownings of 15-24-year-olds were reduced to zero.