2025 Cannes Recap: From AI Apocalypse to AI Optimism

Twelve months ago, AI was the villain. Oh how the tone has changed.

I remember sitting at Cannes last year, listening to panel after panel of industry experts - many of whom had never entered a single prompt - predicting AI’s apocalyptic takeover of creativity. The fear was palpable. The defensiveness was even more so.

This year? Curiosity and finally, optimism.

I was invited to participate at a roundtable on the Pinterest Beach. I was joined by twelve other C-suite leaders, mostly from creative agencies. AI was the only thing anyone wanted to talk about. As the only person in the room actually running an AI company, it was fascinating to watch the shift happen in real-time right before my eyes. These were agencies no longer afraid - they were strategizing and sharing how they are embracing AI. Later that week, I hosted CEOs, ECDs and CPOs from some of the US’s top creative agencies - the same energy: not fear, but excitement.

I embraced AI earlier than most, because I saw a disruptive, imperfect tool that piqued my interest -. We have all witnessed that the most disruptive ads are the ones that turn our heads and perform for our clients, so I started wondering how AI might help us do this in the production field, and hopefully give us an edge (particularly in a world of constant consolidation of businesses, in-house production, and closing production company doors). I thought ‘fuck it, we’ve got nothing to lose’, and in fact we’ve found that AI hasn’t lost us anything, it’s completely re-shaped our business and now we have everything to gain.

Our production company started an AI arm called Made by Humans just under a year ago, and today, it’s generating more business than our traditional live-action productions. Not because AI is replacing live-action, but because it's opening doors we didn’t even know existed in the traditional production world. Our exploration of integrating AI has brought us into new rooms, with new partners, on projects we never had access to before, and we’re particularly seeing this interest from brands directly. “Isn’t that detrimental to your core live-action business?” you might ask… no, it’s actually feeding our live action arm with new opportunities too, which is opening new doors for our directors.

Traditionally, production companies only get called when it's time to triple-bid, but with our AI creative Studio Made By Humans, we’re getting brought into projects much earlier - months before that stage, helping shape the initial creative vision alongside agencies. We’re helping establish look, feel, casting, location - giving agencies sharper, clearer decks to sell into clients.

AI is a tool. A powerful, creative tool - not a shortcut. It is not a magic button. It requires skilled artists who know how to harness its quirks, its limitations, its weirdness. And yes - sometimes the weird shit AI spits out sends us down creative rabbit holes we’d never have gone down otherwise. But that's been a big part of the fun.

Let’s talk about economics. In recent years, shrinking budgets have also shrunk creative ambition. Agencies come to us with bold, imaginative ideas, but a fraction of the budget those ideas deserve. Now, we’re seeing clients bring $300-500K budgets with concepts that would have cost millions before - and we can actually deliver on that scale by integrating AI thoughtfully into the process. Creativity isn’t dying. It’s scaling again.

For an industry that’s spent the last few years playing defence post-covid, I believe AI is the first real offense we’ve had in a long time.

Toby Walsham is founder of production company Imagine This and AI Studio Made by Humans