There’s a conversation that has been repeating often lately. It usually starts with a question about artificial intelligence and audiovisual production, but at its core, it’s always the same issue, just phrased differently: what is really going to die?
There’s a coincidence in my career that took me a while to understand whether it was an advantage or a burden: I run a studio that was born exactly when this technology emerged. I didn’t arrive in a market undergoing transformation; I emerged inside it. And what this coincidence gave me wasn’t awe, but the experience of facing this technology from its most unstable stage. After all, those who are born with the tool in hand learn from day one not only what it does extraordinarily well, but also where it fails, where it stalls, where it simply doesn’t reach. I know the limitations of artificial intelligence better than I know anything else in this market. And that’s precisely why I believe it doesn’t represent the end of anything.
I know disruption is hard, especially for a sector that consolidated in one way and now watches as briefs, deadlines, and contracts change format. And I know we’re living at the peak of novelty: the moment when clients ask for AI by name, when the tool of the week makes headlines, when decisions are made more out of enthusiasm than project needs. When something is new, everything feels heightened. But this has happened before, and it’s worth looking at how it ended.
When photography emerged, many declared the funeral of painting. And for a while, it seemed that prediction made sense. The novelty was everywhere, living its big boom and dominating conversations. As with every new technology, attention focused on it. But while photography gained ground, painting reinvented itself. Freed from the obligation to faithfully reproduce reality, it began to explore what only it could offer. Gradually, it became clear this wasn’t a competition. Each occupied a different, often complementary, space. The technology that seemed to replace one tool ended up expanding the possibilities of the other.
I believe artificial intelligence is living exactly that moment. Today, it’s the novelty. It’s at the center of conversations, sparking enthusiasm and fear, and seems to be everywhere. But if the history of major technologies teaches us anything, it’s that this protagonism doesn’t last forever. My bet is that AI will follow a path similar to electricity. When it first appeared, everything was announced as “electric.” Over time, however, it stopped being a novelty and became part of absolutely everything. It became so present that it stopped being noticed.
If that’s what will happen—if AI becomes just another tool present everywhere—then, in my opinion, the real differentiator today is to treat the future as if it were now. To position ourselves as if that moment has already arrived: to treat it as invisible from the start.
In practice, this requires a reversal of logic. You don’t do a project with artificial intelligence because the market wants it done with artificial intelligence. You do it because it makes possible something that would otherwise die at the table—whether due to deadlines, complexity, the brief, or the budget. That’s why the best artificial intelligence is the one that disappears. The best work is the one where nobody comments on the technology used, but on the story, the idea, the photography, the campaign.
The market, however, is moving in the opposite direction. Obsessed with productivity, the launch of the month, the tool that delivers faster, it has turned technology into the protagonist and forgotten to talk about the result—the film that moves us. And it’s precisely in that distraction that I believe the differentiator lies. While everyone competes over who uses the newest tool, whoever manages to make it invisible, putting it at the service of narrative, will be far ahead. Because the true power of this technology isn’t in appearing, but in making possible what once seemed impossible.
And it’s precisely this deep knowledge of the tool that allows me to affirm that artificial intelligence doesn’t replace the set, VFX, or traditional capture. On the contrary, the best results continue to emerge from the integration of these disciplines. Today, we often work with production companies that carry out all the capture traditionally and turn to AI only to solve a specific challenge that arose after filming. In some cases, it’s a change practically unfeasible by conventional methods. In others, the solution remains VFX, CGI, 3D modeling, or a combination of these techniques. Each technology solves different problems within the same creative process, and increasingly, the answer will be the combination among them.
Because just as a camera doesn’t make someone a cinematographer, access to the best artificial intelligence tools doesn’t make anyone a creative director. The differentiator remains the ability to imagine, make decisions, build narratives, and execute a vision consistently.
In the end, the question that really matters to the sector isn’t which technology will replace another, but how all of them can work together to expand what audiovisual production is capable of achieving. That’s why this reorganization doesn’t represent a dispute between those who have operated for twenty years and those who were born ten months ago. It represents a conversation we’re having together, not against each other. Because the audiovisual production model isn’t dying. It’s, as so many times in history, finding a new way to exist.
