Is AI the end of production, or a new beginning?

Earlier this year, on the same day the industry was digesting the news that Omnicom and IPG are cutting a combined 8,200 roles - with a further 15,000 projected by 2028 - Luma, the AI video generator, announced it was launching a $1 Million Cannes Lions competition.

At first glance, those stories feel unrelated. They’re not.

One is about contraction. The other is about creation. But more importantly, in their way, they give a much clearer picture of what’s actually happening to production. And where it needs to go. 

Let’s start with that figure… 8,200. It’s brutal. No dressing that up. A 6.4 per cent contraction across two of the biggest holding companies in the world. But this isn’t just a bad quarter or cyclical changes like in the past. It’s structural, and it's premeditated. 

Above and main image: Luma AI’s campaign film Space Piano announces a Cannes Lions competition inviting ad creatives to bring their best unmade campaign ideas to life.

Production has, for a long time, been tied to a model that rewarded effort. But that model, the old model, is being dismantled in real time. Billable hours, layered teams, predictable workflows. Time as the primary currency. That world is ending and production sits right in the middle of it. When you hear phrases like ‘talent-related synergies’, what that really means is: fewer people, doing more, faster, for less.

Now add AI into an already sour mix – not the hype and conference panels version of AI we get spoon-fed, by the way, but actual tools already being used in pre-vis, in scripting, in editing, in VFX, in post.

For years, some of the best ideas in advertising have died quietly in the treatment phase.

But if timelines collapse, if crews shrink, if iteration becomes instant, then you have to ask a slightly uncomfortable question: What exactly are you charging for? And even more importantly, what do you actually do?

That’s the important shift. Which brings us to Luma.

For context, Luma is part of a new wave of AI-native creative platforms. Tools built for makers,  directors and production talent. The kind of tech that lets you generate high-quality visual content at speed, without the traditional production drag.

Its $1m Cannes Lions challenge is simple, and slightly radical. Come in, use the tools, make the work and if it’s good enough, it gets funded, produced and entered into Cannes. And if it wins gold, you get $1 million in your sweaty little hands.

Actual work getting an actual award, and the creator getting paid actual money. It's all about creation and finding a new way to work with the new technology. 

What Luma shows us is that those potentially terrifying questions don't have to be a death knell where the answer is job losses.

There is a projected 14 per cent contraction in parts of the sector this year. This isn’t a blip, it’s a reset.

In fact,  if you look at it through the lens of when cost drops, value shifts away from talent and towards judgement, towards taste and towards the people who know what good looks like –and can get there faster than everyone else – the advantage is no longer scale of production, it’s clarity of thinking. It’s a creative instinct, it's knowing when to push, when to stop, when something is actually finished. That’s the new craft.

And yes, there’s an upside here. A big one. For years, some of the best ideas in advertising have died quietly in the treatment phase, deemed too expensive, too complicated or too risky. So they get watered down or killed.