Throughout history, tech has been a game-changer, completely disrupting how we work and create value. Right now, AI is the biggest breakthrough we’ve seen in generations, and it’s turning traditional methods upside down while industries try to figure out how to use it. McKinsey’s State of Fashion underscores this, reporting that 73% of fashion executives consider generative AI a priority, but only 5% think they actually know how to use it effectively. This shows that real innovation happens each time we figure out new ways of working that were previously prohibitive, or better yet, unimaginable.

Traditionally, creativity has been defined as the ability to produce ideas that are both original and useful.  AI’s role in this is obviously evolving and while it can produce limitless interpretations and variations of an idea, the idea itself still comes from a creative mind. In addition to the idea, AI output still requires the correct blend of AI applications (that change almost daily), the correct development workflow, and a range of post-production services to polish and finesse content to a place that really works. The ability to do that takes human experience and expertise. What we’re seeing now is this powerful combination of human creativity, traditional craftsmanship, and commercial strategy being applied to AI outputs, enabling creative to take something novel that’s been generated by AI and bring it to the level that brands actually need.

As AI opens up this universe of possibilities, the content that delivers commercial value—creating viral moments, converting on social, and showing up in global campaigns—still needs that translation from “AI prototype” to “high-impact real-world content.” This blend of artificial and real worlds is one of the most exciting developments I’ve seen in my career and has become a major focus for my teams at Industrial Color and Globaledit. We’re using AI with our clients every day and finding endless ways to apply it to creative production. That said, while I believe in the disruptive nature of technology, I’m also highly attuned to what our clients want and the bar we set for everything we produce. With the rules and technology evolving daily, having the right partners and expertise has become crucial to navigating this new landscape.

Throughout our history, Industrial Color has thrived at that sweet spot where innovation meets real-world application. Just in the past month, our teams have used AI in some way for dozens of client projects and the range is incredible. Some examples include:

• E-commerce PDP & videos for women’s sportswear brands
• Product launch content for a global beauty brand
• Campaign content for an outerwear brand
• AI models and digital twins for different beauty brands
• Natural-sounding AI voiceovers for an electronics brand
• R&D projects for a home goods brand and major food chain

Because AI production is so new, and the tech is evolving at such an insane pace, our work in AI-enabled production spans beyond traditional categories. We now get involved earlier, providing guidance on tech applications and doing targeted R&D to determine where AI can be most successfully applied and outline the best workflows. On the other end of development, we also step in to style and perfect AI-enabled assets, taking them to quality levels you just can’t get with AI alone. In every project, we pull from our decades of experience in almost all forms of creative production to take great ideas, enhance them with technology, and polish the content until it delivers real commercial value.

These programs succeed because they capture that elusive sense of excellence and taste that’s essential for great content, while also leveraging AI’s ability to multiply creative possibilities. In my experience, new tech catches on when it delivers clear benefits. With AI-based creative production, the value comes from strong creative output, accelerated speed to market, and significant cost savings. McKinsey points out that effective curation is still crucial; human skill and creativity remain the foundation for brand differentiation. Rather than replacing these human elements, technology amplifies them, expanding capabilities while retaining artistic skills and knowledge.

For brands today, getting AI right, and figuring it out rapidly is critical. Both waiting too long for the perfect solution or diving in without guidance carry big risks, but AI clearly gives early adopters a competitive edge. When I think about what makes Industrial Color different, I boil it down to our experience producing content for global brands, our range of production capabilities, our consistent embrace of emerging tech, and our eye on future possibilities. This combination seems to consistently put us right at the intersection of artificial innovation and real-world application – I’ve lived it before but could not be more excited about what I see in front of our industry today.

We’re excited to keep exploring new creative territory, delighting our customers, and producing content that drives brand growth in an increasingly AI-enhanced industry.

In 1984, the Mac made it possible for people to easily work with digital images. From desktop publishing to the internet, digital photography, CGI, and now AI, technology has continuously reshaped creative production. As someone leading a creative production company, I’ve learned that tech adoption isn’t just important—it’s critical to survival. 

Early on, I noticed a pattern that I later learned is called the Gartner Hype Cycle. Roughly every seven years, there’s a significant technological advancement that plays out in creative production, just like everywhere else. What’s notable is that the signals and reactions remain largely the same, the only thing that changes is the speed of adoption. 

The cycle unfolds in four phases. The initial phase is when a new technology is released and the hype skyrockets. That’s usually when everyone thinks they will be replaced because the promise is endless and the tech seemingly works perfectly. Phase 1 is pretty quickly followed by Phase 2, the “Trough of Disillusionment,” which is where everyone says, “wait, this tech sucks and is not viable. What was I worried about?, this will never catch on.” Then, just when we’re sure it’s all hype, the tech improves a lot (Phase 3 – The Slope of Enlightenment) and suddenly people are finding real value and searching for more ways to use it. Then we settle into Phase 4 where the tech fully matures and is part of our everyday lives.
 
A client recently asked me, “where are we on the curve now, and what does it mean for the industry?” For many use cases, I believe we’re in the beginning of Phase 3, where the technology is advancing rapidly and becoming really good, really fast. Even in areas where the technology is still emerging, the rate of innovation is still incredible.

At Industrial Color, we’re actively using AI for numerous clients, constantly iterating on new ways to expand our production capabilities, develop our own products, and improve our internal processes. 
 
It’s evident that AI applied to creative production creates a compounding effect. For instance, we can now apply AI to stills and photogrammetry to rapidly generate poseable 3D content, providing marketers with hyper-optimized content at a fraction of the traditional cost. Similar applications are emerging across various formats—still images, video, music, copywriting, design, layout, 3D modeling, and beyond— fundamentally expanding what production and downstream teams can achieve.

Beyond generating entirely new content, AI creates numerous production efficiencies, informing content awareness and decision-making. A few weeks ago, OpenAI just released OpenAI o1 that “thinks” before acting. This self-check process will make things very interesting and I have no doubt that another advancement is imminent. 

2024 was a transformative year for Industrial Color, largely driven by the integration of AI into almost every aspect of the company. The tangible impact of this evolution can be seen in three key areas: improving internal processes, enhancing our tech platform, and – most significantly – expanding the content we create for our clients.

Internal processes

AI tool adoption has enabled us to discover efficiencies and implement incremental changes that cumulatively make a substantial difference. It has also opened the door for our teams to approach projects in a more comprehensive way by leveraging generative tools, historical data, and refined workflows. 

One example is creative ideation, concepting, and storyboarding. Our teams can explore different ideas using tools like Midjourney, Runway ML, and now Sora, modeling layouts in both 2D and 3D, still and motion. It’s pretty remarkable—we can push ideas in countless directions, iterate on concepts within minutes, and expand our capacity to conceptualize and communicate singular ideas to our clients. We’re also leveraging AI through data. Like any company, we have troves of data and are finding insights into optimal practices, content formats, and workflow sequences by exploring that data with different models. 

Content for clients

While the technology remains nascent in some areas, we are consistently discovering ways to leverage leading and emerging tools to produce production-quality AI-generated content, from product packaging to motion campaigns. Lately, we’re producing more AI castings for clients and developing campaign content that feels like a traditional high-production shoot but contains elements that are incredibly hard or cost-prohibitive to capture—like hundreds of exotic flowers actively blooming or scenic shots in inaccessible locations.

What I find most exciting are the storytelling abilities this technology unlocks. Creatives and brands can stretch their imaginations to the limit, play with new styles, explore different compositions, and create narratives that were not previously possible or practical before. I think we’re just scratching the surface of technology’s potential.

There’s also a huge opportunity to breathe new life into existing assets. By training AI models on brand archive content, we can create new content with the same production value as traditional methods while maintaining the brand’s singular aesthetic style.

The critical element when creating high-quality content is defining the correct order of operations, pairing the right techniques, and identifying where to apply traditional processes and where to leverage AI. We’ve found that our decades of collective experience make the crucial difference between producing something exceptional and something that feels artificial. We are also using platforms like ComfyUI to combine different AI tools and create custom workflows optimized for specific content.

Building new technology

Since launching Globaledit in 2003, we’ve been developing in-house technology. Today, we’re reimagining what it means to be a production software company. This year, we developed our first set of AI tools, starting with object and facial recognition technologies that can train on specific faces or broad datasets, making items and talent instantly searchable within entire libraries. These features are a game changer for almost any brand, but particularly the entertainment, sports and live event markets. 

Looking forward, there are clear use cases for post production, marketing, PR, and social teams, where AI can not only automate manual processes, but aid in curation, recommendations, and other time consuming tasks. We see pure production and content management platforms converging like never before and are actively developing a suite of AI enabled products that will deliver totally new capabilities and vastly improve time to market for our brand clients. 

Importantly, AI doesn’t replace creativity—it amplifies it. Like the early Macintosh democratizing design tools, AI provides creative minds with unprecedented capabilities to explore and iterate rapidly. We’re not diminishing original thought; we’re accelerating it.

Our teams are using these tools to propel ideas further, deliver content faster, and transform initial concepts into unexpected, powerful experiences. It’s not about AI replacing human creativity, but about giving creatives more powerful tools to express their vision.

We’re standing at the threshold of another technological revolution. And just like the “1984” commercial promised—we’re here to break through the status quo and do things differently.

It’s a brave new world, again.