PROGRAM &
SPEAKERS
Scandinavian Creative AI Summit, September 12th
PROGRAM IN OVERVIEW
PROGRAM &
SPEAKERS
Scandinavian Creative AI Summit
September 12th
PROGRAM IN OVERVIEW
Click the presentations and jump to detailed description.
9:00 – 9:10
Welcome by our hosts
A warm welcome by our hosts for the day.
Katrine Ellersgaard
Director, DI Rådgiverne
Andreas Holbak Espersen
Acting Director, DI Digital
9:10 – 9:30
HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS – HERE WE GO AGAIN!
Lars Bastholm
Founder, SCAISU & Bastholm Creative Consulting
If you feel slightly out of breath just trying to keep up with the day-to-day developments in generative AI, you are not alone.
Today is all about taking a snapshot of the most important developments in the creative uses of generative AI and leaving with a sense of purpose and a replenished tool box.
To kick us off, Lars is going to do a quick summary of what’s happened since the last SCAISU.
Lars Bastholm
Lars is the co-founder of the Scandinavian Creative AI Summit and the principal of Bastholm Creative Consulting.
After a career spent working at the intersection of storytelling and technology at companies like Google, Ogilvy and AKQA, Lars is now an AI evangelist who advises the creative industries on how to adopt generative AI.
He is also an active AI practitioner involved in several yet-to-be-revealed creative projects.
9:30 – 10:00
REMOVE FRICTION FROM THE MUNDANE
Nick Law
Creative Chairperson, Accenture Song
Remove friction from the mundane. Add texture to the humane.
If we don’t balance experience with expedience, AI will become the junk food of information. It will be easy but empty, delivering the comfort of convenience without the calories of imagination.
Nick will discuss what the right team, process and work looks like to dignify this astonishing new technology.
Nick Law
Nick’s career in design, advertising and digital media has spanned 30 years and four continents, working with the brightest and best across multiple creative disciplines.
He has twice been named in the Creativity 50, a list of the world’s most influential creative people. A native of Sydney, Australia, he now lives in Brooklyn.
Nick Law is Accenture Song’s Creative Chairperson and lead of our Creative Strategic Priority. He is one of the world’s most innovative and versatile creative leaders, who believes all technology needs creativity to make it human, and all creativity needs technology to make it real.
Prior to Accenture, Nick was VP, Marcom Integration at Apple – where he was one of three leading the global design and marketing group, Chief Creative Officer Publicis Groupe, President Publicis – helping to drive a unified creative visions across the Groupe’s Brands, and Vice Chairman, Global Chief Creative Officer at R/GA – where, during his 17-year tenure, he led it to be one of the most awarded agencies in the world.
10:00 – 10:30
The transformative power of AI in immersive experiences
The transforma-
tive power of AI in immersive experiences
Natalie van Sasse van Ysselt
Independent Chief Creative Officer / Consultant
Former VP at The Sphere
Shifting gears, Nathalie van Sasse van Ysselt, who has directed content for mega formats and the most unique canvas in the world, the Las Vegas Sphere, will talk about how AI will impact immersive content creation and experiences in the future.
In a rapidly evolving landscape, where content formats advance as quickly as creator networks and design tools, audiences crave more than passive observation – they seek active participation and agency within experiences.
This desire for experience is propelling immersive content to unprecedented heights,
underscoring the pivotal role of AI in shaping adaptive content strategies, design innovations, and infrastructural advancements for the future.
Digital canvases are scaling and multiplying, transcending conventional 2D screen limitations, expanding into public spaces, hospitality, retail, architecture and immersive entertainment arenas like XR and AR.
The scale, quantity, and interactivity of these canvases have surged to new dimensions, necessitating content that seamlessly maps to complex surfaces, responds to environments in real-time and tracks engagement. At the intersection of function and entertainment is customisation – where experiences will dynamically respond to individual needs and preferences.
AI sits at the convergence of technology and storytelling by driving branching narrative structures, generating imagery and audio at an unprecedented pace.
At this exciting point in time of development, AI has the potential to transform the creative palette, redefining the boundaries of engagement and interaction for experiences, creating a new dimension to the term immersive.
Nathalie van Sasse van Ysselt
Nathalie is an executive creative leader and strategic consultant with a track record creating large scale, innovative formats at the nexus of brand, technology and entertainment for global audiences.
As the former VP of Design and Creative, she launched the Las Vegas Sphere in 2023 and led the in-house creative studio from a tech start-up through years of innovation and product development and transitioned to an operational business working with Fortune 50 brands and global broadcast and sports entities such as Formula 1 Grand Prix and NFL Super Bowl.
One key focus was bringing the Exosphere, the world’s largest spherical LED screen to life. Operating 24/7, 365 days a year, the Exosphere involves complex creation, playback and pipeline infrastructure.
She also kicked off the curatorial art program, inaugurating with renowned media artist Refik Anadol, who transformed the world’s largest digital canvas into an AI driven data sculpture generated by datasets from Nevada national parks.
Before Sphere, Nathalie has worked with leading brands, agencies, museums, and talent to craft impactful experiences the drive user participation and brand engagement backed by clear data and returns.
10:30 – 11:00
COFFEE BREAK
Coffee, cake and networking in the hall
11:00 – 11:30
How AI-powered Virtual Humans will Power the Next Generation of Fan Engagement
How AI-powered Virtual Humans will Power the Next Generation of Fan Engagement
Cortney Harding
Founder, CEO, Friends with Holograms
Head of Immersive Content, Virti
Imagine if, instead of waiting two years between films, fans could engage with their favorite characters every day — with no additional cost to the talent or studio?
Fan fiction writers, usually the most hardcore devotees around, can use Virtual Humans to tell deeper, more immersive stories about the characters they love, thus deepening their devotion.
We’re not far off from this reality — but big questions remain about control, IP, and making sure Virtual Humans don’t cause more harm than good to brands.
In this talk, Cortney Harding will explore the future of AI powered Virtual Humans for entertainment, as well as learning, training, and engagement.
Cortney Harding
Cortney Harding is a renowned authority in emerging technologies and a sought-after speaker. As a change architect, she understands the challenges and opportunities presented by the Metaverse, and how it can impact businesses. Cortney’s approach focuses on solving problems sustainably, which has led to unique speaking opportunities at events like DAVOS, Advertising Week Europe, and SXSW.
Cortney is the Founder and CEO of Friends with Holograms, a transformative VR/AR agency that creates innovative experiences for training. Her clients include industry leaders like Coca-Cola, Meta, Verizon, Walmart, and the US Air Force. Her work has earned her multiple awards, including “Best VR/AR” at Mobile World Congress and Top HR product by HR Executive.
Cortney’s expertise extends beyond the corporate world, and she has taught at prestigious universities like Caltech, Barnard, NYU, and Columbia. She has guest lectured at Harvard Business School, Johns Hopkins, and Chapman University. Cortney has worked with Meta to create “What is the Metaverse?” a groundbreaking course covering all aspects of the Metaverse, including safety and ethical issues.
Before founding Friends with Holograms, Cortney led business development for Moth+Flame and several music technology startups. She has been featured in the New York Times, NPR, and Ad Week, and has written for Billboard, Teen Vogue, and the Village Voice. Cortney is also the author of three books, including a recent one on using virtual reality for social change.
11:30 – 12:00
Supercharging Creativity With AI:
The Guide to AI Adoption
Supercharging Creativity With AI:
The Guide to AI Adoption
Tim Rodgers
Rehab AI, founder
In this session, Tim Rodgers, the founder of RehabAI, will delve into how AI is transforming the creative landscape, not as a replacement but as a powerful ally in the creative process.
Tim will share real-world examples of custom AI models developed by his team that are currently being used by leading brands such as Google, Disney, and Nike. These tools are designed to enhance creativity across five key areas:
- Consumer Insights: Quickly generate actionable insights from real-time data, helping you understand your audience better and make more informed creative decisions.
- Brief Creation: Streamline the briefing process, turning raw ideas into well-structured, strategic briefs that align with your brand’s goals.
- Sales Enablement: Empower your media and publisher sales teams with tailored content and data-driven strategies to close deals effectively.
- Creative Inspiration: Brainstorm with your team to spark new ideas by analyzing trends, providing creative stimuli, and suggesting innovative concepts that push the boundaries of your work.
- Creative Testing: Validate your creative ideas against synthetic audiences, allowing you to test and refine concepts before launching them into the market.
Tim will demonstrate how these AI tools are already making a tangible impact on the creative process, turning data challenges into opportunities and enabling teams to produce more innovative and effective work.
Whether you’re a creative professional, marketer, or brand strategist, this talk will provide practical insights on integrating AI into your workflow and supercharge your creativity today.
Tim Rodgers
Tim Rodgers founded Rehab, a digital innovation agency, in 2005, renowned for its award-winning marketing innovation projects for some of the world’s most iconic brands.
Rehab Agency was the innovation team behind Nike Cryptokicks (RTFKT), Google Black Owned Friday, and the NBA 75th. Tim championed the idea of hacking, creating a sprint-based ideation process called Triage, which incorporates AI to help their teams move faster and with better consumer insights and testing.
RehabAI is a new division within rehab focused on developing bespoke AI tools and workflows that empower teams, streamline processes, and ultimately elevate the quality and impact of their work. AI should be an assistant, a creative partner that enables teams to reach new heights of productivity and creativity.
Outside of work, Tim DJs, sails, grows hair and goes nowhere very, very fast on his Peloton.
12:00 – 12:30
The story of “The Max Joe Show”.
Or how I Made a Viral AI Comedy Show that Got Famous on the Internet.
Darri Thorsteinsson
Darri3D, Founder & Creative Director
Darri Thorsteinsson is an award-winning Icelandic writer and director with over 20 years of experience in 3D and film, specializing in commercials, television, promos, and music videos. His career includes work with one of the leading advertising agencies in Norway NoA Anorak and Warner Discovery in Oslo.
More recently, Darri has collaborated with production companies like Prettybird and Common People Films, Future Creatives in London.
Darri will discuss achieving cohesive storytelling with AI and 3D by utilizing generated audio and video, embracing AI “jank” and hallucinations, and integrating them into the story.
He will also show the upcoming 3D and AI revolution, offering insights into the future of creative work and how to write and create anything you can imagine by using AI and 3D together.
Darri Thorsteinsson
Darri Thorsteinsson is an award-winning Icelandic writer and director with over 20 years of experience in 3D and film, specializing in commercials, television, promos, and music videos.
His career includes work with Anorak award winning ad agency, Norwegian, and Warner Discovery in Oslo. More recently, Darri has collaborated with leading production companies like Prettybird and Common People Films Futures creatives in London.
12:30 – 13:30
LUNCH
Lunch buffet and networking in the hall
13:30 – 14:00
Liquid Content is Coming
Matthieu Lorrain
Creative Lead, Google DeepMind
Join Matthieu on a journey into the future. Imagine stories that shape-shift with every watch, creating a personal revolution for each viewer.
Dive into the world of AI-powered storytelling that’s turning culture on its head. Matthieu unveils Liquid Content, where narratives break free from their confines, offering an endless canvas of creativity.
In this presentation you will discover how this paradigm shift will set your imagination on fire.
Matthieu Lorrain
Matthieu Lorrain is a creative and technology pioneer in the fields of digital experiences & content innovation. He is currently Creative Lead, Google DeepMind. He is also the co-founder of Liquid Logic, a collective exploring the future of AI creativity.
Matthieu Lorrain has a long history working with global brands and tech companies to invent new types of user engagement. He has been exploring creative applications of emerging technologies for the last 20 years: ranging from interactive video to connected objects, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence.
His most recent work focuses on how generative AI can supercharge the creative experience. His past projects have received multiple accolades from global organizations including Emmy Awards, Cannes Lions (Gold), Clios, Webby’s, Tribeca Film Festival, ‘#1 Product Hunt of the Day’ and FWA.
Matthieu is a guest lecturer at Columbia University and NYU. He is also frequently invited as featured speaker at major conferences. He has previously spoken at Cannes Lions, SXSW, Spike Asia, 4A’s Createtech and the NYC Tech Forum.
Born & raised in the French Alps, Matthieu lived in Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Montreal before moving to New York City in 2011. He holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies from Institut d’Etudes Politiques and another in Marketing & Communication from ESCP Paris Business School.
14:00 – 14:30
Artificially Fabulous – how AI generated imagery is changing the fashion industry
Nima Abbasi
Partner, Maison Meta
Designers and brands are leveraging AI to push the boundaries of creativity, crafting collections that blend innovation with aesthetics. With AI, fashion designers can generate unique patterns, fabrics, and even entire collections in a fraction of the time it would take traditionally. The result is a new wave of fashion that’s as diverse as it is dynamic, offering endless possibilities for self-expression and creativity.
Beyond just design, AI-generated imagery is also revolutionizing the way fashion is marketed and consumed. Virtual models, created entirely through AI, are becoming the new faces of campaigns, bringing an otherworldly, hyper-real aesthetic to fashion ads and social media. These AI models can wear outfits that don’t yet exist in the physical world, showcasing designs in futuristic virtual environments that captivate audiences and set trends before a single thread is woven. This blend of technology and fashion is not just a fleeting trend; it’s reshaping the industry’s approach to both design and branding.
Moreover, AI’s impact on fashion extends to sustainability and inclusivity. By simulating how different materials will behave or how a design will look on various body types, AI helps brands reduce waste and create more inclusive collections. Consumers can now visualize how clothes will look on them before they buy, leading to more personalized and satisfying shopping experiences. In this way, AI isn’t just making fashion more fabulous—it’s making it smarter, more sustainable, and more attuned to the diverse needs and desires of today’s consumers.
Maison Meta’s clients include the likes of Moncler, Revolve, Pangaia, Google, Dolce & Gabbana, Zalando, Mango, Norma Kamali, UBS, Coty, ba&sh, BrandTech Group, WWP and Campari amongst others. Maison Meta is also behind the first AI Fashion Week now in its second season. The collections of the winners, designed using AI, are produced in partnership with Revolve and sold online. Maison Meta was recently named in Vogue Business Top 100 Innovators list and its work has been featured in more than 600 articles globally as well as in industry reports by McKinsey, Deloitte, Business of Fashion and Wunderman Thompson.
Nima Abbasi
Nima Abbasi has 20+ years of experience exploring the near future of the digital revolution, working at the intersection of business innovation and new technologies. He is a mix of strategic, creative and analytical thinker with a knack for identifying key trends and matching them with business opportunities ahead of the mainstream.
He is currently a partner at Maison Meta, a world-leading AI Studio, Innovation Lab and consultancy focused on leveraging Generative AI technologies and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in fashion, beauty and hospitality.
Nima is a regular speaker at various AI events including the McKinsey AI Summit, UBS AI Summit, NYU AI Forum, Louis Vuitton’s internal Gen AI Conference, Business of Fashion’s Tech Summit amongst others. He has also been an advisor to the British Consul General in NYC and a mentor at Google Creative Lab. Nima qualified as a lawyer in the UK and continued his career as a management consultant at Price Waterhouse.
14:30 – 15:00
COFFEE BREAK
Coffee, cake and networking in the hall
15:00 – 15:30
DO COMPUTERS SPEAK CINEMA?
Mads Damsbo
CEO, Kaspar AI
In 2016 Werner Herzog proclaimed that “a computer will never make a film as good as mine in 4500 years”.
Yet here we are, only a few years later, and large language models, video generation, synthetic voice overs and automatic editing are rapidly becoming part of the filmmaking process.
In his keynote, Mads Damsbo will reflect on the complex and delicate process of making a film written by an AI, trained on the body of work of Werner Herzog. With Werner’s skeptical permission, they trained several language and image models to produce a screenplay that is now a fully embodied feature film set to open later this year.
Mads will unpack the potential of human-machine co-creation, and its many limitations, as well as try to answer the fundamental question: What is our role as filmmakers, when AI has learned the language of cinema?
Mads Damsbo
Mads Damsbo is a creative producer, entrepreneur and passionate user-experience designer, focused on bringing forward impactful narratives, leveraging emerging technology and provoking unexpected emotions in diverse audiences. As the founder and creative director of the multiple award winning XR content studio Makropol, he has raised over 5 million € for original productions, led numerous creative teams, including a full symphony orchestra, through complex workflows and started several new companies along the way,
Mads’ most notable work includes The Doghouse (2014) – a first-person film installation, Festival Nouveau Cinéma, NYFF, Cannes NEXT and The Future of Storytelling; The Shared Individual (2016) – a collective VR experience at Idfa DocLab; Doom Room (2017) – a mixed reality VR performance. Recently he produced Ole Bornedal’s The Shadow (2021) and End Of Night (2021), which won the coveted Lion for best Immersive Narrative at the Venice Film Festival and was voted Best Film of 2021 by Politiken.
Currently, Mads is the CEO and creative producer at Kaspar AI, a deep tech company that he co-founded. Kaspar is focused on using AI to co-create audiovisual storytelling, specifically helping editors work with large amounts of filmed material.
15:30 – 16:00
AI as a Filmmaking Tool
AI as a Filmmaking Tool
Dave Clark
Secret Level
Writer/Director
If you follow the ongoing evolution of AI short films, you’ve almost certainly seen work that Dave has directed. As one of the frontrunners of using AI in filmmaking, he has made multiple viral AI shorts that made viewers sit up and wonder out loud: “You can do THAT with AI!?!?”
In this presentation, Dave will talk about his process, what works and doesn’t (yet) work in AI filmmaking as well as speculate about where it’s all headed. And, naturally, show you some of his recent work.
Dave Clark
Dave Clark is an award-winning filmmaker who is pioneering the use of AI as a storytelling device in film, TV, and advertising.
Regarded as one of the leading futurists in the storytelling world, Dave has recently amassed millions of views for his AI directing work, and has been featured several times in Forbes, NBC, and No Film School. He has spoken at prestigious events such as the Cannes International Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, MIT, Cogx, etc.
Over his career, Dave has created commercials, immersive engagements, and brand spots for several companies, including Snapchat, Ciroc, Hewlett Packard, Pepsi, Lobos Tequila, Intel, and more.
Outside of filmmaking, Dave is a successful creative director, working alongside notable figures in the entertainment industry. He also has creatively partnered with actors/activists like Michael Ealy, George Clooney, the late Michael K. Williams, and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to help fight for justice and inclusion through narrative storytelling.
16:00 – 16:45
Closing remarks and reception in the hall
Lars Bastholm
Founder, SCAISU & Bastholm Creative Consulting
So what did we learn today?
The organizers wrap up and invite you to a closing reception in the hall!