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:
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2 inaugural AI & Creativity Summits, and 2 intimate Salons in LA and NYC.
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More than 1,000 hand-selected pioneers convened across our Summits.
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Partnerships formed with leading AI and creative technology companies including ElevenLabs, Lovable, Luma AI, AWS, Adobe, and frog.
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Adobe welcomed as the Presenting Creative Partner of our LA Summit.
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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.
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Natalie Monbiot joined as a Founding Partner alongside the formation of our world-class team.
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Achieved an NPS of 76, placing Artist and the Machine among the top percentile of industry gatherings.
2025 Themes:
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Taste as the creative edge
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Human agency steering AI
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Brands scaling AI systems
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Creative AI going physical
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Building with rights in mind
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Hybrid human–AI workflows
2025 Learnings:
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Existing fandoms expand with AI
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Storytelling still drives adoption
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Legacy brands are innovating in AI
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AI opens new revenue for existing IP
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Resistance can be an adoption signal
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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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Paige Piskin is an award-winning AI and XR creator, known for pushing the boundaries of digital makeup, character design, and augmented reality experiences. With AR effects generating more than 300 billion impressions, shared 2 billion times, Paige has worked with major brands like Netflix, Bratz, Warner, and Coldplay, bringing immersive storytelling to life. She has also been a guest judge for Netflix, consultant, and 2x hackathon winner, recognized for her innovative work in AI-driven AR experiences. Paige is passionate about blending generative AI with character design, expanding the possibilities of digital self-expression and interactive storytelling.
Claire Silver is an anonymous AI-Collaborative artist that works with oil, acrylic, collage, photography, and different digital mediums to create her work. She often blends the classical style and mythos into her art, collaboratively producing work that feels at once familiar and strange. Her work explores themes of innocence, trauma, the hero’s journey, and how our view of them will change in an increasingly transhumanist future. Claire’s art can be found in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been at Sotheby’s London and Christie’s New York and in galleries, museums, and festivals all over the world. Featured in the New York Times, WIRED, Fortune, NPR, and countless podcasts, Claire takes every opportunity to explore her unending fascination with AI, fight for visibility for this budding art movement, and wonder at the magnitude of this moment in history. She often feels like a caveman painting fire. Claire is vocal in her belief that with the rise of AI, for the first time, the barrier of skill is swept away and that in this evolving era, taste is the new skill.