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Early Bird Tickets Live for LA
Plus conversations from Cannes Lions
Theme
At Cannes Lions, the AI conversation moved well past broad pro or anti AI arguments and into the nuanced questions around implementation. Google DeepMind announced a partnership with A24. Demis Hassabis pointed to taste, design sensitivity, original thinking, and cross-disciplinary synthesis as the skills that matter as systems get stronger. But on the ground, the more revealing insight was how unfinished the practice still feels. There is no Susan Kare of AI yet. No interface, visual grammar, or creative operating model has made the technology feel inevitable to normal people. Voice-only is too narrow. Dashboards are too much. The best use cases are still fighting through the shape of the tools.
Signal
That gap showed up everywhere. Cannes is still highly commercial, and much of the AI conversation defaulted to workflow, scale, compliance, and go-to-market. The conversations that stood out, however, kept landing on the same point, that the biggest drag on AI may be cultural. Generic output now has a shelf life measured in days. The âtoo perfectâ AI look gets recognized quickly, and audiences are already developing antibodies to it. The creators pulling ahead are not creating content faucets. They are sketching first, photographing first, training models on their own work, building from real assets, and using AI as an adaptive tool around a point of view that no one else can access.
The advantage is moving to people and teams with taste, memory, restraint, and a willingness to design systems around judgment. Cannes made clear that the next phase of AI and Creativity will not be won by the teams producing the most, but shaped by the ones who can make the work feel specific, embodied, culturally aware, real, and worth paying attention to.
At our Cannes Lions brunch âThe Rise of the New Creative Technologistâ, presented with Adobe and featuring Aaron Mitchell Finegold, Val Carlson, and Paige Piskin, unpacked the role now responsible for translating craft, taste, brand intent, and abstract human direction into workflows AI can actually execute. The answer they circled was practical rather than abstract. The teams pulling ahead are learning to put creative judgment inside the system, then keep a human close enough to know what is worth bringing into the world.
LA Summit
The next room is taking shape, this time with the addition of a whole new day of programming. This December, Artist and the Machine returns in Los Angeles, bringing together the people building the future of AI and Creativity across art, technology, media, design, film, music, and culture. Early bird tickets are now live, and announcing our first-ever Summit Day 2 soon!
Pulse
Humans Are Still in Charge: Time reports on what leaders at Cannes Lions are saying about creativity in the age of AI.
Google invests in A24 to build AI movie tools: The Verse notes that the AI âresearch partnershipâ aims to bridge the gap âbetween cutting-edge technology and next generation entertainment.â
Are you having fun yet? Dataland, an intense new AI art museum: The Economic covers how Refik Anadolâs new project takes visitors senses by storm.
If youâre creating something aligned with Artist and the Machine or youâd like to recommend work shaping this space, weâd love to see it for the chance to be featured. Reach out to us at [email protected].
Til next time,
Artist and the Machine.
xx
