Curiouser and Curiouser: The Curious Autumn Festival Round-Up
Our Autumn Curious Festival had everything! Why diverse, lived experience is the one thing AI can’t fake, updates from YouTube on their creator network, why Google Search is now Gemini in a trench coat and dark glasses, brand tracking in the age of AI, the Gen Z publisher view on content, AI-powered VFX and filmmaking, agents getting cuter, microdramas and a solemn vow to stop reading AI hot takes on social media.
Hosted by our Innovation Lead, Peter Gasston, this edition kicked off with updates on what social networks have been up to (editor’s note, the VCCP Communications team are not worried about these in platform AI editing features… yet) including the continuing shift to episodic content and the reputational and regulatory factors driving platform change.
Onward to search, LLMs and general attitudes towards AI adoption (a recent 2026 Microsoft-Gallup AI Survey found that the majority of people feel positively towards AI, with 64% of people are Curious about it, natch). Agents are getting cuter in an effort to reduce fear and friction involved in telling everything about your life - and your credit card details - to something you are trusting to help you think.
Image Credit: Meta
Carola Dixon from Luma AI took the audience through how AI agents are being put to work on creative projects, showing how their tech is being used across historically visually rich categories like luxury fashion. As agents move from answering prompts to planning and executing tasks, Carola shared examples of what happens when you lean into the creative elements of a brief.
Laurence Moss from Gen Z publisher The Brit Spot gave the audience the view from the other side of the feed. He shared what it takes to build and hold the attention of a young British audience who can spot a brand trying too hard, reminding us why we need to learn from each piece of content and why it's not all about video.
Sabrina Mah from Tracksuit made the case that brands now live in two minds, the human one and the machine one, and most marketers only measure the first. With AI answers typically shortlisting just three or four brands, being known and loved by people is no guarantee the machine will recommend you (and vice versa). Her answer: measure both, join them up, and keep real people as the ground truth rather than synthetic respondents.
Dom Hyams from inclusive-first Purple Goat Agency tackled trust, which is being squeezed on two fronts: AI fakery and the creator hustle. 88% of people say AI video tools have eroded their trust in what they see on social, yet fewer than 4% of ads feature disabled people, a figure that hasn’t moved since 2018. Diverse, lived experience is one of the few things that can’t be faked, and the Unstereotype Alliance numbers show it pays in loyalty, pricing power and sales.
Jordi Bares from Rohtau VFX showed how tailoring teams to projects (rather than the other way round) puts the money into the pixels instead of the overheads. His BMW case study, built on an AI model trained from scratch with zero legal issues, took us through face swaps, performance transfer and a CGI Miquela, all proof that AI extends the craft rather than replacing it.
Image Credit: Rohtau VFX
Andrew Akinyede, aka The Content Producer, charted his route from graphic designer to award-winning hybrid AI director, busting a few myths along the way (no, one prompt does not equal a finished film). His takeaway: tools change, story doesn’t. Direct, don’t just generate, because taste is the edge.
Elizabeth Lunde Hermansson and Nisha Mathews from YouTube brought the creator economy numbers, including 78% of UK Gen Z preferring creator content to studio-produced shows. Nisha’s advice to brands was to stop interrupting and start participating, finding the “Magic Middle” where brand, creator and audience overlap, just as Expedia did when it handed the keys to IShowSpeed.
Peter returned to close the session with an update on synthetic content, covering everything from image and music models to avatars, and how new video models and hybrid production mark Hollywood’s AI turning point. His headline - innovation is now about capability (editing, reasoning, control) rather than visual quality alone, while regulation like the EU AI Act is pushing disclosure and anti-slop transparency up the agenda.
If there was one thread running through the day, it was this: the tools are moving faster than ever, but taste, trust and a good story are still doing the heavy lifting. See you in the spring, when we’ll no doubt need a whole new set of model names.
Curious is part of VCCP’s Challenger Series - our expanding thought leadership universe which is designed to arm our clients with insights and updates on the big questions impacting our industry, all curated by our expert team. If you’d like to hear more from Curious, please join our mailing list.