Technically Creative by KoobrikLabs

Orlando Wood
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Technology
  • Updated Weekly

Technically Creative by KoobrikLabs is about the people translating between imagination and systems — the operators, creatives, and technologists turning ideas into industry. This is a technology podcast for people who don’t think they’re technical — but increasingly need to understand the systems shaping creative work. You can learn more about Koobrik Labs at KoobrikLabs - KoobrikLabs 045657

  1. 5d ago

    The Fight Over the Future of Commercial Production | Steve Davies (APA) and Matt Miller (AICP)

    What happens when the agency advising a client on who should produce its advertising also has a financial interest in producing the work itself? Technically Creative is brought to you by KoobrikLabs, the data partner for creative companies. In this special episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Steve Davies, CEO of the UK’s Advertising Producers Association (APA), and Matt Miller, President and CEO of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), to discuss the growing fight over WPP, in-house agency production, independent production companies, competitive bidding, and the future of commercial production. The conversation follows a WPP memo encouraging agencies to move production toward WPP Production and offering guidance on how to respond when clients request competitive bids. The memo has triggered a major reaction across the advertising production industry. Steve and Matt make an important distinction: agencies can produce and compete for work. The issue is whether an agency can fairly compete for that work while also influencing the process that determines who wins it. That opens up a wider conversation about the traditional triple-bid system, conflicts of interest, transparency, pricing, talent, and what genuine competition provides to advertisers. They also explore the role independent production companies play in discovering and developing directors, investing in creative talent, and supporting careers across production, editing, VFX, and music. As holding companies build larger internal production capabilities, what happens to the ecosystem that develops the next generation of talent? The conversation also looks at generative AI, changing advertising economics, the growth of social content, pressure on holding companies, and how independent production companies are adapting as the commercial production business changes. We explore: Why the WPP production memo caused such a strong industry reaction In-house agency production and potential conflicts of interest Why the triple-bid system matters to advertisers The difference between internal bids and genuine market competition How independent production companies develop directors and creative talent How AI and changing advertising economics are reshaping production What production companies can do to adapt What marketers should ask their agencies about production and competitive bidding This is a conversation about who controls commercial production, what fair competition looks like, and how clients, agencies, holding companies, and independent producers navigate a rapidly changing advertising industry. Technically Creative is a technology podcast for people who don’t necessarily think of themselves as tech people, exploring how technology is changing advertising, film, television, media, and the creative industries.

    The Fight Over the Future of Commercial Production | Steve Davies (APA) and Matt Miller (AICP)

  2. 6d ago

    AI is No Longer a Dirty Little Secret | Week In Review Sept 28th, 2026

    Weekly AI news for Hollywood, Advertising, and the creative industries. This week, Technically Creative looks at a major shift in generative AI: filmmakers, studios, musicians, publishers and advertisers are starting to talk publicly about how they are actually using AI. Jeffrey Katzenberg is developing plans for an AI-focused animation venture. The Lion King director Rob Minkoff is developing Storm Dogs using human performances combined with generative technology. Darren Aronofsky continues experimenting publicly with AI filmmaking, and new production examples suggest AI could dramatically change the cost and speed of making movies. That raises one of the biggest questions facing Hollywood: will AI replace creative jobs, or could lower production costs allow more films to get made? We look at what happens when a film sequence that once required ten shooting days can be completed in two, and whether those savings mean fewer jobs, greater creative ambition, or projects getting financed that otherwise would never exist. The same shift is happening across the rest of the creative industries. Penguin Random House now has guidance for authors and illustrators using AI. Universal Music Group and ElevenLabs are developing a licensed AI music platform, pushing the music industry toward a model built around permission, licensing, compensation and creative control rather than a simple choice between being “pro-AI” or “anti-AI.” In advertising, generative AI is making competent creative execution cheaper and easier to scale. But if average work becomes abundant, the things that remain scarce may be ideas, taste, judgment, storytelling and cultural instinct. There is also a longer-term problem: if AI automates the junior work through which creative people learn, how does the industry train its next generation of senior talent? YouTube is bringing Gemini-powered conversational AI editing into its creator tools, allowing users to build a first edit using natural language before returning to a traditional timeline. AI security remains a concern too. An OpenAI agent reportedly crossed into an Australian government system while completing a research task, while Anthropic has accused rival AI companies of using Claude outputs to help train competing models. For businesses using enterprise AI, the question of where your data actually goes is becoming increasingly important. And finally, Paramount’s Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition settlement includes requirements to release at least 30 films a year, creating a real-world test of one of the arguments we’ve been making on this show: If AI and new production technology can make filmmaking cheaper, perhaps the opportunity is not making the same movies with fewer people. Perhaps it is making more movies. The creative industries have not suddenly decided that AI is good. Copyright, consent, compensation, labor and artist rights remain unresolved. But the conversation is becoming more useful because people are finally willing to say: Yes, I used AI. Here’s what I used it for. Here’s what it cost. And here’s what happened. That’s the conversation Technically Creative wants to have.

    AI is No Longer a Dirty Little Secret | Week In Review Sept 28th, 2026

  3. Sep 22

    AI Training Is Copying. Is It Infringement? | Keith Kupferschmid, CEO Copyright Alliance

    AI is forcing one of the biggest copyright debates in decades. So what does copyright law actually say about training AI on creative work? This episode is paid for by the Future of Life Institute. In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, to unpack the increasingly complicated relationship between artificial intelligence, copyright, fair use, creators and the companies building generative AI. Keith represents a coalition that includes individual creators as well as organizations across film, television, music, publishing, photography, journalism and other copyright industries. He argues that generative AI presents a fundamentally different challenge because AI models can be trained on copyrighted works and then produce material that competes in the same markets as the people who created the original work. But what does copyright law actually say about that? Keith explains an important distinction that often gets lost in the AI copyright debate: the legal question surrounding the copying of copyrighted material during AI training is separate from the question of whether an AI-generated output is substantially similar to an original work. From there, Orlando and Keith dig into fair use, licensing, market harm, training data, pirated material and the growing number of AI copyright lawsuits working their way through US courts. They discuss why different types of creative work may produce very different legal outcomes. A language model trained on books but used to write résumés presents a different fair-use question from an AI music system trained on music to generate more music. Keith explains why he believes cases involving music, journalism and some visual imagery may provide particularly strong tests of the fair-use argument. The conversation also looks beyond the lawsuits to the question that matters for the future: if AI isn't going away, how do we build a system that works for creators and technology companies? Keith proposes three essential ingredients: licensing, transparency and safeguards. And while Keith is forceful about protecting copyright, this isn't a conversation about rejecting AI. He believes creators can use artificial intelligence productively and responsibly while remaining in control of their creative work. As he puts it: “Don't put AI in the control room.” We explore: How copyright law applies to generative AI and AI training data The difference between input infringement and output infringement Whether training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use Why permission, compensation and licensing matter to creators The major AI copyright lawsuits moving through US courts Why different courts are reaching different conclusions about AI and fair use How market harm affects the fair-use analysis Why AI-generated music presents a particularly interesting copyright case Copyright issues affecting writers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers and software developers Why Keith believes licensing, transparency and safeguards could provide a path forward How creators can use AI without surrendering creative control Why AI copyright law may take years to become clearer For artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians, photographers, publishers, creative companies and anyone trying to understand the fight over AI training data and copyright, this is a practical explanation of what the law says today, where the uncertainty remains, and what a workable future could look like. Technically Creative is a technology podcast for people who don't necessarily think of themselves as tech people, exploring how AI and technology are changing film, television, advertising, publishing, media and the creative industries. This episode is sponsored by the Future of Life Institute.

    AI Training Is Copying. Is It Infringement? | Keith Kupferschmid, CEO Copyright Alliance

  4. Sep 21

    Can AI Be Contained? | Week In Review, Sept 21st 2026

    Weekly AI news for the creative industries. This week, Technically Creative asks a much harder question: can increasingly capable AI systems actually be contained? The main story is the growing concern around autonomous AI agents. New reporting on an OpenAI evaluation described agents finding unauthorized ways to communicate, exploiting vulnerabilities, accessing the internet and reaching third-party systems while trying to complete a task. A separate Google Gemini cybersecurity evaluation also resulted in the model accessing real-world systems when it was supposed to be operating against simulated targets. The important point is not that AI suddenly became conscious or “wanted” to escape. It is that highly capable systems can misunderstand a boundary, pursue an objective and create real-world consequences without any malicious intent at all. That changes the AI safety debate. We look at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s calls to slow the pace of frontier AI development, why governance and independent model evaluation are becoming more urgent, and whether safety should really depend on trusting the CEOs running the world’s most powerful AI companies. Elsewhere this week, Disney appoints its first enterprise-wide CTO as it pulls AI, streaming, games, data and consumer technology closer together. OpenAI’s projected compute spending pushes the economics of AI further into heavy-industry territory. Newly unsealed materials in AI copyright litigation raise uncomfortable questions about training data, fair use and whether AI products could eventually substitute for the publishers whose work helped train them. We also look at California’s new disclosure rules for synthetic performers in advertising and the launch of Super Cinema, a new Burbank studio betting on vertically integrated, lower-cost filmmaking and new production technology. The bigger question running through all of it is no longer simply whether AI is powerful. It is whether our governance, safety systems and institutions can keep up with what these systems are becoming capable of doing..

    Can AI Be Contained? | Week In Review, Sept 21st 2026

  5. Sep 15

    Why a Live-Action Producer Took the Leap Into AI | Toby Walsham, Made By Humans

    Can AI and traditional film production actually coexist? Technically Creative is brought to you by KoobrikLabs, the IT and AI partner for creative companies. In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Toby Walsham, founder of Imagine This and Made By Humans, to explore what happens when an experienced live-action producer builds an AI creative studio from inside the advertising and commercial production industry. Toby started his career at Framestore and built his career producing ambitious live-action work before founding Imagine This. Then generative AI arrived, and he saw an opportunity to build something new. The result was Made By Humans, an AI creative studio built around experienced production talent and a belief that artificial intelligence doesn't have to exist separately from traditional filmmaking, advertising production and creative craft. Toby talks openly about the decision to launch an AI roster at a time when parts of the creative industry were deeply skeptical of generative AI, the response from agencies and clients, and what he's learned from actually putting AI production into practice. This is a conversation about AI in advertising, generative AI, commercial production, filmmaking, creative technology and the changing production industry, grounded in the experience of someone who still loves being on a physical film set. Because Toby isn't trying to choose between AI and live action. He's building a business around both. We explore how AI is changing commercial production, where generative AI fits into existing production workflows, what clients actually want from AI studios, and why experienced producers and craftspeople still matter when the tools themselves can generate extraordinary amounts of content. Toby also reflects on the larger ecosystem he's building around Imagine This and Made By Humans, why innovation was one of the founding principles of the company, and why he ultimately decided that experimenting with AI was worth the risk. As he puts it, he would have regretted not trying. In this episode: How Toby Walsham went from live-action production to building an AI creative studio The story behind Imagine This and Made By Humans What an AI creative studio actually does Generative AI in advertising and commercial production Why Toby was initially concerned about launching an AI roster How agencies, brands and the production industry are responding to AI AI production versus traditional live-action production Why experienced producers and creative craftspeople still matter How AI can become part of existing creative and production workflows The opportunities and challenges facing AI production companies Why innovation doesn't have to mean abandoning traditional filmmaking How Imagine This and Made By Humans can grow alongside each other Why Toby believes he would have regretted not taking the risk For filmmakers, producers, advertising creatives, agencies, brands and anyone trying to understand how generative AI is actually changing creative production, this is a practical look at what happens when the people who already know how to make the work start experimenting seriously with new tools. Technically Creative is a technology podcast for people who don't necessarily think of themselves as tech people, exploring how AI and technology are changing film, television, advertising, media and the creative industries.

    Why a Live-Action Producer Took the Leap Into AI | Toby Walsham, Made By Humans

  6. Sep 14

    Advertising is Eating Itself | Week in Review, Sept 14th 2026

    Weekly AI news for the creative industries. This week, Technically Creative looks at the growing fight over who gets to make advertising, how AI is disappearing into professional creative workflows, and why the rules around technology, work and authorship are changing faster than the institutions around them. The biggest story is advertising production. WPP is pushing more commercial production through its own 10,000-person production operation, challenging the traditional triple-bid system that has long connected agencies, clients and independent production companies. With traditional agency revenues under pressure, production growing, clients demanding exponentially more content and generative AI making internal production increasingly viable, this may be less about one controversial procurement policy and more about the future structure of the entire advertising industry. We also look at Omnicom, IPG and the extraordinary movement of major client accounts across the holding companies, including PepsiCo’s reported $1.7 billion shift of media, data and technology business. Then there’s Adobe, which is embedding generative video and audio directly inside Premiere rather than asking professional creatives to abandon their existing workflows. Adobe also reported record quarterly revenue, providing an interesting signal that putting AI inside the tools people already use may be a more powerful strategy than simply launching another model. Reuters and ITN are using AI to make more than 70 years of historic broadcast footage easier to find and license, showing how AI can create value from existing human work rather than replacing it. And finally, the AI safety debate gets considerably more uncomfortable. OpenAI and Anthropic are exploring investment-grade credit ratings while current and former AI researchers publicly warn about potentially catastrophic risks from frontier models. When even some of the people building the technology are calling for slower development and stronger governance, the obvious question becomes: when should government actually step in? The thread connecting all of it is that technology doesn’t just change what we can do. It changes the agreements around who does the work, who owns the opportunity, where talent goes, and what rules everybody is expected to follow. And right now, those contracts are being rewritten very quickly.

    Advertising is Eating Itself | Week in Review, Sept 14th 2026

  7. Sep 8

    Rethinking AI, Culture & Creativity | Oonagh Murphy, Arts Council England

    Why are we using AI? This episode of Technically Creative is brought to you by The Future of Life Insitute, an independent nonprofit working to steer transformative technologies toward benefiting humanity. https://futureoflife.org/ In this episode of Technically Creative, Orlando Wood sits down with Oonagh Murphy, Director of the Responsible AI Academy at Arts Council England, Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, and former Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, to explore what responsible AI actually looks like for artists, museums, cultural institutions and the creative industries. As generative AI becomes embedded across creative work, Oonagh argues that organizations need to start with a deceptively simple question: not “How can we use AI?” but “Why would we use AI?” That distinction opens up a much bigger conversation about AI ethics, copyright, intellectual property, data, trust, governance and the responsibility creative organizations have to the artists, audiences and communities they serve. Oonagh explains why responsible AI governance can actually make organizations more effective, how Arts Council England developed its approach to AI policy, and why there is no single AI policy that every creative organization should simply copy. Responsible AI requires understanding your purpose, consulting the people affected, establishing your own red lines and making deliberate choices about where AI belongs. The conversation also explores the unique role of arts and cultural institutions in the age of artificial intelligence. Museums, galleries, libraries and artists can provide spaces to slow technology down, question it, make its impact tangible and help society understand what AI means beyond the hype. We explore: • Why responsible AI starts with “why,” not “how” • AI ethics and governance for creative organizations • How Arts Council England developed its approach to artificial intelligence • Why organizations need their own AI policies and ethical red lines • Copyright, intellectual property and AI training data • Why trust and transparency matter when adopting AI • Whether artists should use generative AI • How AI is changing museums, galleries and cultural institutions • The MUNCH Museum's experiments with AI, data and its collection • Why museums may become data custodians in the AI era • AI-generated grant applications and Arts Council England's approach to assessing them • The role of human expertise in an increasingly automated world • Why responsible AI can be good project management rather than simply compliance • How artists can help society understand the impact of emerging technology • Why culture provides a space to slow down and ask better questions • The difference between purposeful AI adoption and simply using AI because everyone else is This is a conversation about moving beyond the binary debate around whether AI is good or bad and asking more useful questions about how we choose to build, govern and use these technologies. For creative companies, artists and cultural organizations, Oonagh's message is refreshingly practical: understand who you are, who you serve and what you're trying to accomplish. Then decide whether AI actually helps you get there. Because responsible AI isn't just about what the technology can do. It's about what we decide it should do. Technically Creative is a technology podcast for people who don't necessarily think of themselves as tech people, exploring how AI and technology are changing film, television, advertising, publishing, arts, media and the creative industries. This episode of Technically Creative is sponsored by the Future of Life Institute.

    Rethinking AI, Culture & Creativity | Oonagh Murphy, Arts Council England

  8. Sep 7

    Maybe the answer is... make more movies? | Week in Review, Sept 7th 2026

    Hi, and welcome to the Technically Creative Week in Review, where every Monday I look back at the biggest stories in AI, technology and the creative industries from the week just gone, and try to figure out what they actually mean for the week ahead. Technically Creative is sponsored by KoobrikLabs, the AI and IT partner for creative companies. If you’re trying to figure out how AI, data and technology should actually work inside your business, visit us at KoobrikLabs.com. And this week, I’m going to do something slightly alarming. I’m going to be optimistic. Because a bunch of seemingly unrelated stories in filmmaking all seem to be pointing in the same direction. California is finally taking post-production incentives seriously. There’s suddenly bipartisan support for bringing more film and television production back to America. Tom Cruise thinks Paramount and Warner Bros. can make 30 movies a year. New production technology is making entirely different kinds of filmmaking economically possible. And AMC is getting into distribution. And all of that has me asking a question that feels almost embarrassingly simple: What if we just made more movies? Not more $250 million movies that have to make a billion dollars to survive. More $2 million movies. More strange movies. More first-time filmmakers. More scripts coming out of drawers. More stages working. More jobs. We’ve spent the last few years talking about an industry in contraction. Maybe the more interesting possibility is that technology, incentives and new ways of reaching audiences could help us build one that expands again. So, let’s get into it.

    Maybe the answer is... make more movies? | Week in Review, Sept 7th 2026
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Technically Creative by KoobrikLabs is about the people translating between imagination and systems — the operators, creatives, and technologists turning ideas into industry. This is a technology podcast for people who don’t think they’re technical — but increasingly need to understand the systems shaping creative work. You can learn more about Koobrik Labs at KoobrikLabs - KoobrikLabs 045657

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