The Year AI & Creativity Took Flight

What began as an experiment quickly revealed a clear need for a shared space where creatives, builders, artists, and machines could come together to connect and collaborate on the future of AI. Over the past year, Artist and the Machine has travelled to the forefront of creative technology to grow a community grounded in human connection, creativity, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

It’s been just eight months since the first Artist and the Machine Summit this spring - this year has truly moved faster than the speed of light. Here are a few of our highlights from 2025:

• 2 inaugural AI & Creativity Summits, and 2 intimate Salons in LA and NYC.

• More than 1,000 hand-selected pioneers convened across our Summits.

• Partnerships formed with leading AI and creative technology companies including ElevenLabs, Lovable, Luma AI, AWS, Adobe, and frog.

• Adobe welcomed as the Presenting Creative Partner of our LA Summit.

• LA Summit headlined by Grimes, alongside leaders from Mattel, Meow Wolf, Coca-Cola, Gap, Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fortune, Fast Company, Hearst, Bloomberg, Splice, and Cloudflare.

• Natalie Monbiot joined as a Founding Partner alongside the formation of our world-class team.

• Achieved an NPS of 76, placing Artist and the Machine among the top percentile of industry gatherings.

2025 Themes:

• Taste as the creative edge

• Human agency steering AI

• Brands scaling AI systems

• Creative AI going physical

• Building with rights in mind

• Hybrid human–AI workflows

2025 Learnings:

• Existing fandoms expand with AI

• Storytelling still drives adoption

• Legacy brands are innovating in AI

• AI opens new revenue for existing IP

• Resistance can be an adoption signal

• AI magnifies strong and weak ideas

2026 Predictions:

1. Aliens, Artists, and Machines

Creatives stop treating AI as software to command and start working with it as a non-human intelligence. The most compelling work emerges from dialogue, friction, and co-creation with systems that think differently than we do.

2. Infrastructure Rewrites Economics

Rights-aware infrastructure, controlled AI environments for brands, and deeper personalization make attribution and participation default, preserving value across the full lifecycle of creativity.

3. Taste Bottlenecks AI Progress

As AI handles more execution, taste, restraint, and decision-making become the scarce skills. The gap widens between teams that can direct machines well and those that cannot.

4. Attention Becomes Infrastructure

With AI accelerating output and information density, creators and brands invest in systems that protect attention, create time for strategic thinking, and preserve human intuition as a form of long-term leverage.

5. AI Development Happens Off Screen

Robots, immersive systems, autonomous machines, and embodied interfaces become creative partners. What emerged in 2025 scales in 2026, as AI moves into physical spaces and lived experiences.

None of this would have been possible without each and every member of our community. So to all the artists and all the machines, thank you. We are so deeply grateful to be on this ride alongside you all.

And now, onwards to our next AI & Creativity Summit in NYC on May 14, 2026. Limited presale tickets available:

Til next time,

Artist and the Machine.

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