Digital twins: While Hollywood panics, AI tools are working for adland
Stephen Barnes, Founder of technical and creative agency Collective, observes that while artificial intelligence is at the heart of the latest existential crisis to agitate the movie industry, AI-powered digital twins are reshaping advertising film production.
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At Cannes Film Festival 2025, one of the biggest stories wasn’t a breakout film or an A-list feud - it was the creeping dread of AI.
From deepfake actors to scriptbots gunning for screen credits, Hollywood is now locked in a moral panic over artificial intelligence. Fears over job losses, copyright chaos and the erosion of creative integrity have gripped the industry - echoing the kind of dystopian dread you’d expect on the screen, not behind it.
While Hollywood debates the dangers of AI, some corners of the advertising industry are already quietly using it—and thriving.
But if Tinseltown took a breath and looked sideways, they’d see a different story playing out in our little parallel creative universe. While Hollywood debates the dangers of AI, some corners of the advertising industry are already quietly using it—and thriving.
What’s more, we’re not just using AI in the abstract. We’re grounding it in something practical, scalable, and brand-safe: digital twins.
Digital twins aren’t theory. They’re infrastructure.
Unlike traditional 3D models, digital twins are highly detailed, structured, and interoperable replicas of physical products – built using open standards like Pixar’s USD format. They don’t just look real. They behave like the real thing: light reflects off surfaces accurately, packaging materials simulate real-world physics, and labels bend, reflect, and refract as they would in your hand.
One tweak and you’re good to go — no reshoots, no retouching, no delay.
Crucially, these aren’t static visuals. They’re dynamic, editable assets. Need a regional packaging variant? Drop in a new label. Want to localise colour palettes or regulatory info? One tweak and you’re good to go — no reshoots, no retouching, no delay.
Working with Unilever, we are already proving this works at scale. By helping them combine digital twins with AI workflows, they’ve halved their content creation timelines, cut production costs by 50 per cent and delivered consistent, photoreal visuals across every market and channel — all without setting foot in a studio.
This isn’t AI run wild. It’s AI with guardrails.
The fear in Hollywood – and rightly so – is that AI can hallucinate. It can get things wrong. Extra fingers, distorted packaging, or off-brand approximations aren't just visual glitches — they’re reputational risks. And for industries where precision and storytelling matter, that’s no small thing.
In advertising, we’ve already weathered the AI debate. Two years ago, we faced similar fears — would AI take our jobs?
But digital twins solve that. They anchor AI to reality. Instead of relying on approximations or best guesses, AI tools can use digital twins as true-to-product references. That means less inconsistency, safer automation, and faster speed to market.
Think of them as brand-approved source files that ensure AI generates right-first-time content, every time.
Why adland is ahead of the game
In advertising, we’ve already weathered the AI debate. Two years ago, we faced similar fears — would AI take our jobs? Could creativity survive automation? The answer turned out to be simpler and more optimistic than expected.
AI didn’t replace creativity. It removed the friction around it.
It’s content production with a green conscience, too — no globe-trotting shoots, no physical waste.
By taking on the repetitive, production-heavy work —such as research, storyboarding and prototyping ideas —AI and digital twins free creative minds to focus on what matters: storytelling, strategy, and craft.
In a typical ad production powered by twins, the lighting is always golden hour, the props are always pixel-perfect, and there are zero retakes. We’ve moved from chaos to craft, from guesswork to precision. It’s content production with a green conscience, too — no globe-trotting shoots, no physical waste.
Advertising is proving that you can use AI without losing integrity.
The irony? The industry most accused of faking it is showing how to keep it real.
Advertising is proving that you can use AI without losing integrity. You can scale content creation without sacrificing consistency. And that digital tools don’t need to replace human creativity — they can elevate it.
Hollywood, for all its storytelling genius, is stuck in a binary debate: AI good or bad? But the real answer is more nuanced. AI is only as good as the structure you give it. And that structure already exists — we’ve built it, tested it, and proven it works.
Digital twins are not some sci-fi concept. They’re here, they’re working, and they’re redefining how branded visuals are created — not in some future world, but right now.
So instead of asking if AI will kill creativity, maybe it’s time to ask: how do we use it to protect it?
Because from where I’m sitting, the credits are already rolling on the old way of doing things — and the next act is looking a lot more efficient, more accurate, and still, unmistakably human.
