Drive, don’t drift: what Cannes 2025 taught us about AI, creativity & trust

What emerged from Cannes 2025 was a more mature, thoughtful approach to AI in creativity, positioning human imagination not as AI’s competitor but as its essential driver.

Co-pilot, not autopilot

One of the most telling moments came from Apple’s vice-president of marketing communications, Tor Myhren, this year’s Creative Marketer of the Year, who crystallized the prevailing sentiment with characteristic directness: “The good news is AI is not going to kill advertising. The bad news is that AI is not going to save advertising. We’ve got to save ourselves by believing in what’s always made this industry special: human creativity.”

Myhren’s message resonated because it captured what became Cannes 2025’s defining theme: AI as creative enabler, not replacement. “AI will ride shotgun and be the best creative partner this industry has ever seen,” he said. “But we’ve got to drive.” This co-pilot metaphor wasn’t just Apple’s perspective. It echoed across panels and case studies throughout the week.

The vibe shift was palpable. Where previous years showcased AI as a novelty or threat, Cannes 2025 treated it as an established tool requiring thoughtful integration. Agency executives were expecting “more practicality and less hot air” compared with previous years of AI buzzword saturation.

TikTok’s announcement of Symphony updates demonstrated this mature approach. Andy Yang, global head of creative & brand ads, positioned the tools not as replacement technology but as acceleration: “We’re entering a new era of creativity, one where ideas move at the speed of culture and where AI doesn’t replace imagination but rather accelerates it.”

Meta’s announcement of new generative AI features, including an image-to-video generator that transforms product photos into polished video ads, also exemplified this practical approach. Rather than positioning these capabilities as a creative breakthrough, Meta framed them as a way to scale execution and improve consistency. Warren Jolly, chief executive at digital marketing agency adQuadrant, called the personalization features “truly essential for agencies pushing boundaries in creative efficiency.”

Yet this pragmatic embrace came with important caveats. Kevin Mulroy, executive creative director and founding partner at Mischief, highlighted that “it has never been easier, faster and cheaper to create content, but it’s also never been easier, faster and cheaper to be mediocre.” This mediocrity risk becomes even more pronounced when the industry uses the same LLMs for creative ideation, resulting in creative homogenization, a flattening into sameness that threatens the very originality that Cannes rewards.

The industry consensus seemed to be that while AI can accelerate execution brilliantly, the spark of original thinking alongside the ability to understand cultural moments, tap into human emotions and craft narratives that resonate, remains distinctly human territory.

Human craft as the differentiator

The work that rose to the top at Cannes confirmed that emotional intelligence and cultural insight are still the primary currencies of great advertising.

Dove earned the Media Grand Prix for its ‘Real Beauty’ campaign, rethinking beauty standards in the age of AI. The brand partnered with Pinterest to enable users to create their own vision of what they want beauty to look like, which ultimately changed the social platform’s algorithm to prioritize natural beauty over AI-generated images. It hit a cultural nerve and reflected an authentic brand stance.

Natura’s ‘Amazon Greenventory’ earned the Grand Prix for Sustainable Development Goals. It used AI-powered drones to map biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest: tech-forward, yes, but grounded in a real sustainability mission.

Then there was GoDaddy’s ‘Act Like You Know,’ which took home the Creative B2B Grand Prix. It humorously introduced small businesses to GoDaddy’s AI tools using multiple over-the-top personas, all played by actor Walton Goggins. The campaign leaned into AI but never let go of human storytelling. 

These campaigns didn’t win because they used AI. They won because they said something real. AI helped execute but didn’t dictate the creative direction.

This should be comforting for creatives who fear being replaced. If anything, this year’s winners reaffirmed that tools may change, but the heart of the work this year required empathy, originality and emotional depth – and that remains the differentiator. If AI can take over the mechanical aspects and speed the process, then all the better.

Audience trust & the coming transparency reckoning

But there was an elephant in the room throughout Cannes 2025: consumer trust. While industry professionals debated implementation strategies, audiences were growing increasingly skeptical of AI-generated content that felt synthetic or opaque.

Recent IAB research reveals a stark disconnect between industry enthusiasm and consumer sentiment. While 80% of advertising executives believe consumers feel positive about AI-generated ads, less than half of Gen Z and millennial consumers actually do. The gap is particularly pronounced among Gen Z, who are more likely than millennials to perceive brands using AI-generated ads as “inauthentic” or “fake.”

More troubling, 52% of young consumers remain on the fence or feel negatively about AI-created advertising. When disclosure is involved, the results are mixed: while about one-third say their trust would increase if they knew an ad used AI, a quarter would trust the company less. This isn’t just a perception problem. It’s a trust crisis that threatens the entire value proposition of advertising.

The solution isn’t to avoid AI; it’s to embrace radical transparency about its use. IAB research suggests that disclosure alone isn’t enough. Brands need to educate consumers about why and how they’re using AI to gain trust. Transparency, it turns out, isn’t just ethical. It’s strategic.

If we don’t establish shared norms now, we risk eroding the very relationships AI is supposed to enhance. This is why IAB will be working on guidelines for transparency and disclosure in collaboration with the advertising industry.

Consumers will reward brands that don’t just use AI efficiently, but also responsibly. The next frontier in marketing isn’t just scale. It’s credibility.

What comes next?

Cannes 2025 showed that AI is no longer a hypothetical disruptor. It’s here, embedded in everything from strategy to production. But what the week also made clear is that we, the humans, are still in charge of the why, even if AI helps with the how.

The creative industry doesn’t need to brace for impact. It needs to get sharper about the choices ahead. The winners won’t be those who use AI the most. They’ll be those who use it best, without losing the soul of what makes this industry matter. It’s a balance and one we can absolutely get right if we choose to drive, not drift.