*Special Edition* Trends on Stage in 2026

Theme: Artists, Aliens, and Agents

Across AI and Creativity, the conversation is moving away from what AI can generate and toward what it can perceive. As systems become more agentic, artists are encountering AI less as a tool and more as an alien intelligence.

At the same time, the question of value is shifting. As AI requires richer context to operate, intellectual property, archives, and real-world source material become essential infrastructure.

The open question is no longer capability, but context, the role of the artist, and who accrues value as AI learns to act within the world we live in.

Signal

Below are the themes and questions guiding our programming for the NYC summit. These are early signals, glimpses of where the conversations are heading, and an invitation to explore them more deeply with us in New York this spring.

1. Are artists discovering something new by treating AI as alien?
   Artists are exploring what creativity becomes when AI is treated not as a tool, but as an alien, agentic collaborator.

2. Is IP moving from something AI trains on to something AI depends on
   IP becomes creative infrastructure, enabling durable value accrual across the AI lifecycle rather than one-way extraction.

3. What happens when AI has the full context on the real world?
   When AI begins to understand the world it operates in, creativity may move from making things to shaping the conditions in which intelligence exists.

Details below:

Human View

Don Allen Stevenson III sits down the the founder of World Labs, Fei-Fei Li, to explore perception, action, simulation, and the deeper philosophical questions behind world models.

Pulse

1. A timely discussion with Shira Lazar and Flosstradamus: From our LA Summit on music, originality, and why AI challenges familiar narratives of creative disruption.

2. Redefining Artistry in the Age of AI: Adobe’s Hannah Elsakr breaks down how creative infrastructure is emerging as the mechanism through which intent, context, and value can remain with creators as AI scales.

We hope to see you in NYC 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