2025 was a landmark year at Industrial Color and across the creative industry at large. This year, AI moved from experimentation to execution, completely reshaping how creative production operates at scale. This summer, we launched our dedicated AI studio, combining our expertise in traditional production with cutting-edge technology—while delivering premium work across all departments, including campaigns for Miu Miu, YSL Beauty, Under Armour, Reebok, Target, and NYX.
The question facing brands now is no longer whether to integrate AI into their creative processes but how to do so effectively. What hasn’t changed are the non-negotiables that are central to our work: strong visual taste, technical mastery, and powerful storytelling.
Here’s what defined our transformational year and what we’re taking into 2026.
LEADING THE CHARGE
Now that generative AI has proven itself as a production tool, the opportunity and the stakes are high. “Strategically embracing AI unlocks the ability to deliver more content faster, and to find efficiencies in tight budgets,” says CEO Steve Kalalian. “But without the right guardrails and expertise, brands can find themselves in the content flood, producing volume without real value.”
Our hybrid workflows blend traditional production methods with AI-enabled processes, so clients get both the limitless possibilities of AI and the creative control of capture, retouching, and CGI. We know which AI tools excel at specific creative and technical asks and design our production sequences accordingly. New platforms like Weavy help us consolidate those tools of choice so we can work smarter and faster. We prioritize data security and IP protection in our workflows and rather than feeding proprietary brand assets into open model training sets, we utilize advanced prompting techniques combined with secure, reference-based workflows. This allows us to achieve high-fidelity results while keeping your intellectual property contained. Our approach ensures we deliver creative precision early in the lifecycle, which results in higher volumes of usable assets as brands scale their AI content strategies. The result is production-ready assets that meet brand standards, delivered through workflows that we continuously refine for each client’s unique needs.
As AI tools, guidelines, and regulations evolve, safety and scalability are becoming as critical as the creative work itself. This year, we’ve been deeply involved in establishing industry standards and navigating the legal landscape so AI can be used responsibly by clients and creators alike. As teams are increasingly expected to deliver on the promise of AI, we’ve seen companies become open to determining best practices together. By helping clients navigate the complex landscape of usage rights, transparency, and asset assignability, we’re equipping brands to confidently scale. We focus on establishing clear protocols for how AI is utilized, ensuring that brands understand the provenance of their content as they grow.
THE CONVERGENCE OF AI, CG, AND POST
CG is about control and precision; generative AI is about speed, scale, and exploration. When determining which approach or combination of tools to use, our North Star is simple: how well does it serve the specific creative and technical problems at hand?
“AI doesn’t replace CG; it complements it,” says AI director Tim Francisco. “My background in CG gives me a deep understanding of craft and storytelling, which guides me to use AI responsibly and creatively.”
The biggest impact we’ve seen from AI is the ability to explore more creative options early on. This allows clients to be involved sooner and react to real options that align with their asks. For a recent beauty client, AI was the right choice because it enabled us to explore a wide range of creative options quickly, pressure-test them with the client, then apply traditional post and finishing where precision mattered most. We ultimately delivered double the amount of videos in less than half the amount of time and budget it would have taken with a pure CG approach.
Still, taste isn’t easily trained or replicated, and it takes human expertise to recognize what’s working, what aligns with a brief, and which directions are worth refining or discarding. AI tools have yet to fully deliver production-level stability and consistency in their outputs; minute details like precise product tweaks and even the basics of physics in videos still benefit from refinement by traditional methods. Our decades of expertise in traditional production have given us the attention to detail and technical editing mastery to turn AI-powered explorations into exceptional final results for our clients.
strategic ai implEmentation for e-commerce
Over the past year, we’ve integrated AI into live e-comm workflows for multiple global brands, establishing repeatable, production-ready solutions that complement traditional shoots and identifying where AI can add the most value in their production processes.
“More than 75% of new e-commerce project requests this year involved AI,” says VP of E-Commerce Operations Felecia Boccuto. “Clients are no longer asking if AI can work, but how and where it fits into their content ecosystem.
For brands getting started with AI, we’ve established clear, low-risk entry points and identified the right use cases on a per-brand basis, applying AI strategically rather than universally. Our brand-safe pipeline delivers:
- Defined AI entry points aligned to each brand’s visual standards
- Clear guardrails around realism, accuracy, and usage rights
- Hybrid workflows combining capture, AI generation, and retouching
- Faster feedback loops and predictable timelines
With these structures in place, we’ve seen the strongest adoption in:
- PDP imagery extensions (model swaps, pose variations, background updates, color swaps, color swaps on new AI models)
- Rapid testing of creative directions before full production
- Seasonal and regional content localization
- Cost- and time-efficient content refreshes for always-on e-commerce needs
These use cases allow brands to increase output, reduce reshoot dependency, and maintain visual consistency at scale. Combined with our quality controls, we’ve made AI e-comm production more accessible without disrupting existing workflows, and many clients have since transitioned from pilots to repeat usage.
looking ahead
As we move into next year, our approach remains the same: use the best tools for the brief, maintain incomparable standards, and keep human taste and creativity at the center of every decision. The work we’re most excited about is the kind our clients wouldn’t have thought was possible years or even months ago.
See you in 2026!
