AI at the Cannes Lions; from attention to intimacy

Expense reports are being nervously submitted; rosé stains are getting laundered from linen shirts; $4,000 lanyards are well on their way to becoming landfill. 

All are signs that the 70^th Cannes Lions Festival is done and dusted, but what did we learn from the annual fruit salad-ing of creativity, clients and the Crossiette? 

The metaverse, now officially the industry's ugly step-child, was sadly misinterpreted and misunderstood.

A year ago, the metaverse was the belle of the ball. Twelve months later discussion of interoperable, immersive worlds was akin to farting in an elevator. Thankfully the lingering odour could be Febreze‘d with buzzy AI chat, the subject du jour.

It was the ubiquitous topic of talks, panels and press meetings. While it’s easy to prod a finger at the fickle nature of our industry, I do believe artificial intelligence will be a more enduring obsession. The metaverse, now officially the industry's ugly step-child, was sadly misinterpreted and misunderstood, then muddied further by get-rich-quick pseudo cryptopians. The sun has not set on the immersive web3 world, but that’s a story for another article. 

Above: Dentsu Creative picked up a Grand Prix in Cannes for its Scrolling Therapy campaign, which utilised AI. 

Generative AI (text to text, text to image, text to video) has almost instantly limpet-ed itself to our industry and, after a recent week in Cannes, it seems we are both excited and scared. 

When it came to the awards and AI, there was lots to be optimistic about. Dentsu Creative’s Scrolling Therapy, which picked up a Pharma Grand Prix for an app which showed how AI technology can allow people with Parkinson’s disease to slow the progression of muscle atrophy while scrolling social media, was a great example of the positive power of AI. As was the Entertainment for Sport’s Grand Prix winner which saw Michelob Ultra’s Dreamcaster help a blind man provide commentary for a basketball game with the help of generative artificial intelligence. 

AI ain’t going away, principally because it will save both time and money.

At the Palais, OpenAi COO, Brad Lightcap, told the audience not to fear AI as they’re thinking really big and very broadly about democratic systems for the technology that will only enhance what we do. 

AI ain’t going away, principally because it will save both time and money. Many of the use cases aren’t hugely glamorous right now (image adjustments and corrections, copy tasks, code generation, research and storyboarding) but smart businesses will figure out how to embed them into their workflow and see the savings. A way to maximise the slimming margins of our industry is a powerful motivator. 

Let me stick my neck out and theorise on a more expansive impact generative AI could have on our industry, and that's the steady shift from being attention driven to intimacy driven. Confused? First, consider that ChatGTP et al have mastered the most powerful tool humanity ever developed: language. The mastery of language has constructed religions, started wars and got us drinking cow juice by the gallons. 

Above: FCB New York also won a Grand Prix in Cannes this year for Dreamcaster, in which AI helped a blind person provide basketball commentary for a live game. 

Large language models (LLMs) are so expert that the current discourse is whether we should highlight what is or isn’t human-generated (side note: this article is written by a fault-filled human). If you want to lean more into the dystopian side of AI’s mastery of language then tune into what Sapiens author Yuval Harari has to say on the topic. For now, I’ll steer away to a more industry-specific place.

You’ll know the conversation isn’t with a person but, over time, you really won’t care. 

The janky ecomm chatbots of old didn’t fool any of us, it turns out they were the warm-up act for the real pros. LLMs are a galactic leap forward in sophistication, so much so that I can imagine a brand website with no navigation, nothing to click, nothing to do but start a conversation:

Me: Hey Nike, can you show me the Jordans that Michael wears in episode two2 of The Last Dance?  

Swoosh AI: Here you go, Nick. I’ve dropped your size into the basket. 

Me: Can you send them to my office today? 

Swoosh AI: On it. 

The AI will converse like a human, it will be the absolute oracle of company information, it will always be ‘on brand’, tireless and constantly improving, learning your tastes and your needs. It will start to know what you want before you know you want it. Freaky? Maybe for us over 40s. Either way, you’ll have a new level of intimacy and dependency. You’ll know the conversation isn’t with a person but, over time, you really won’t care.