First Look at the LA Program: 1X, Meow Wolf, Niantic Spatial, and more

Theme

Our Los Angeles program is taking shape, and this week we’re sharing a first look. Summit follows four threads. The first is authorship and ownership – who controls creative work, and who gets credit for it when a machine is generating alongside an artist across music, law and more. The second follows AI off the screen and into simulated and physical space, from real-time generated worlds and maps built for machines to responsive materials and humanoid robots built for the home. The third looks at what filmmakers and world-builders can do once production constraints fall away, and whether that leads to better work or simply more of it. The fourth is the elusive taste at scale, because a company that can produce far more still needs to decide if it should.

Below are some of the sessions we’re most looking forward to, with more surprises still to come.

Day One: LA Summit, December 2

• The New Rules of Ownership. Michael Nash of Universal Music Group, joined by an artist soon to be revealed, on what musicians should control, what they should be paid for, and who gets to decide.

• Humanoid Design: Building Machines We Can Live With. 1X's Dar Sleeper with Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow on how a robot should move, behave, and present itself inside a home.

• Building the Google Maps of the AI Era. Niantic Spatial's John Hanke with Nick Thompson on the map layer machines need to move through the physical world, and what it could open up for AR, robotics, and creative work that lives in real places.

• Experiential World-Building with the Creator of Meow Wolf. Vince Kadlubek on what happens when environments people walk through can adapt and respond to each visitor.

You'll also hear from Kelly Boesch, Behnaz Farahi, and Amazon Design’s Jo Shoesmith on building taste at scale, with more surprises to come in the full agenda.

Day Two: Studio Day, December 3

Studio Day takes place the next day as a hands-on extension of the insights generated from Summit. Each guest is placed in one or two small sessions, followed by hosted lunches, a Creative Showcase where every session presents what it made, and a rooftop happy hour.

A preview of some of our sessions:

• [REDACTED] Creative Hackathon. Attendees pair up, get a creative brief, and build short-form work live with [REDACTED’S] AI tools, coached by [REDACTED’S] creators. The strongest pieces screen at the Showcase.

• Luma Creative Battle. Teams compete against the clock on a shared brief using Luma’s AI video tools, coached by creative technologists from Luma Lab, Luma’s LA production studio.

• AI for Startups with Adobe. A working session for founders and creative leads on going from a blank page to finished brand assets in a single sitting.

Pulse

• Luma Credits for the Artist and the Machine Community: Are you a creator looking for creative agents to expand and accelerate your work? Use the code LUMA-AATM at checkout to trial 1 month of Luma’s Pro membership or 3 months of Plus.

• AMD Buys a World: AMD agreed to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs in an all-stock deal worth $8.2 billion. Spatial intelligence and world models are now a chipmaker's strategic priority, which says a lot about where this part of the field is heading.

• OpenAI, the Movie: Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, premiered at the New York Film Festival. Hollywood is now making prestige drama out of the people building the tools it's adopting.

• The Trailer Is Out: Gossip Goblin released the first trailer for Gods Don't Give Gifts, which opens December 4. Forbes looks at whether a following of more than a billion views will translate into ticket sales.

If you’re creating something aligned with Artist and the Machine or you’d like to recommend work shaping this space, we’d 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