*Industry Report* The Medium is not Neutral

Theme

The printing press reorganized religion and politics. Cinema globalized storytelling and converged culture across borders. Television relocated media into the living room and domesticated entertainment. Each technological shift changed not only distribution, but behavior: where we gathered, how long we paid attention, who we experienced stories with, and which narratives could plausibly dominate.

Signal

We are in the middle of another paradigm shift. What appears to be an expansion of formats, including short-form video, AI-native micro dramas, interactive plot lines, and immersive worlds, is a deeper shift in how culture is produced, distributed, and lived. Mobile and AI are not simply tools layered onto existing systems; they define the constraints within which media and entertainment now evolve.

Read the full report below, with contributions from Michael Wise, Jon Rogers, Don Allen Stevenson III, Hannah Elsakr, and Liz Tingue.

Summit

We are just under two months away from our AI & Creativity Summit in New York, and the speaker lineup is heating up. Featured speakers include Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic, Kakul Srivastava, the CEO of Splice, Sinead Bovell, Doug Shapiro, researchers from MIT, and many more. Stay tuned for the unveiling of our full speaker lineup and agenda ahead of the event.

& Beyond

A common thing we hear from companies after our events: "How do we bring this inside our organization?"

Starting this year, we're offering a small number of custom AI & Creativity immersion experiences for enterprises, purpose-built for internal teams, leadership groups, and agency partners who want to move beyond the conversation and into genuine creative exploration with AI.

If this sounds like something your company needs, just respond to this email. We'd love to talk.

Pulse

• Anthropic releases study on what 81,000 people want from AI: The largest qualitative study of its kind, users share how they use AI, what they dream it could make possible, and what they fear it might do.

• Yann LeCun Raises $1 Billion to Build AI That Understands the Physical World: Wired reports that Meta’s former chief AI scientist has long argued that human-level AI will come from mastering the physical world, not language.

• Hollywood Needs AI: A guest column in The Wrap making the case for why media and entertainment should embrace the frontier technology.

We hope to see you in NY on May 14, 2026, where we will continue these conversations on the forefront of AI and Creativity:

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