My CES 2026 Diary as a Creative Technologist from India

CES has a strange way of putting you in your place.

No matter how many trend decks you’ve reviewed, how many prototypes you’ve shipped, or how often you work with emerging technology, walking into CES forces a reset. Not just of expectations, but of perspective. You are reminded very quickly that the future is not arriving in neat slides or predictable timelines — it is messy, layered, and already colliding with reality.

When I landed in Las Vegas for CES 2026, I wasn’t chasing announcements or gadgets. I was carrying a much simpler question: what here is real, and what is still performance? For advertising and marketing, that distinction now matters more than ever.

From the first few hours on the floor, it was clear that this year felt different.

The noise hadn’t increased — it had reduced. Booths felt calmer. Conversations felt more grounded. There was noticeably less chest-thumping and far more intent. CES no longer felt like a playground of possibilities. It felt like a checkpoint — a place where ideas are no longer admired for their ambition alone, but judged on their readiness to live inside real businesses.

As someone who works at the intersection of creative ambition and technological execution, that shift was reassuring.

CES today isn’t about the next device or screen. It’s about how intelligence, creativity, data, culture and commerce are collapsing into new operating models. For advertising, it’s no longer a question of if technology will reshape our industry — but how responsibly, how affordably and how humanely it will do so.

One evening captured this shift perfectly for me.

Watching The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere is overwhelming in a way that’s hard to articulate. It’s spectacle, yes — but it’s also deeply emotional. A familiar story retold inside an architectural impossibility. Yet the most meaningful moment came later, sitting at the WPP Media Lounge, listening to a Google expert unpack how that experience was actually built.

What struck me wasn’t the sophistication of the AI involved — it was the restraint. Technology wasn’t positioned as the hero. It was an invisible collaborator. Engineering, data and storytelling working together quietly, in service of emotion.

That stayed with me because it echoed something I’ve believed throughout my career: when technology draws attention to itself, it’s usually doing too much. The best creative technology disappears into the experience.

Throughout CES, I kept returning to that thought.

Compared to last year, the maturity shift was unmistakable. CES 2025 still carried a layer of hype. AGI felt perpetually “around the corner.” Humanoid robotics felt cinematic. Conversational AI impressed, but often felt scripted. In 2026, the posture had changed.

The optimism was still there — but it was grounded.

What once lived in labs was now being discussed in boardroom language: governance, integration, ROI, cultural impact. People weren’t asking whether something could work. They were asking how to deploy it without breaking trust.

That distinction is crucial for advertising.

Some of my most memorable interactions were with advanced conversational systems and robotics — not because they were flawless, but because they were emotionally convincing. A pause that felt human. A response that made you smile before reminding yourself you were speaking to a machine. It was thrilling, slightly unsettling, and deeply instructive.

Yet, the most important signals at CES 2026 weren’t embodied in hardware at all. They were embedded in systems.

AI has quietly moved into the operational core of marketing. Planning systems that adapt in real time. Creative engines that understand context and culture, not just prompts. Measurement models that predict outcomes instead of explaining the past. Advertising is shifting from reactive execution to anticipatory decision-making.

What excited me most was not automation — but augmentation. Systems designed to elevate human creativity, not flatten it.

And this is where my perspective as a creative technologist from India felt especially relevant.

India doesn’t innovate in ideal conditions. We innovate under constraint. Multiple languages. Low bandwidth. Vast diversity. Extreme scale. That forces clarity. It forces usefulness. It forces empathy.

Walking through CES, it was impossible not to notice that many of the solutions the global ecosystem is now chasing — accessibility-first AI, voice-led interfaces, low-data experiences — are problems Indian teams have been solving for years.

“Build for India, deploy for the world” no longer feels like a slogan. It feels like a competitive advantage.

This is also why the work emerging from WPP’s Global Delivery Centres in India feels so timely. Indian teams are no longer just executing global strategies — they’re shaping how those strategies are built, tested and scaled responsibly. CES made it clear that this is no longer a support story. It’s a leadership one.

What is often underestimated globally is India’s appetite for experimentation. A willingness to pilot without perfect case studies. To test ideas that don’t yet have awards attached to them. To push brands beyond dashboards and back into culture.

CES 2026 reinforced a belief I hold strongly: the next phase of brand growth will come from organisations that treat creative technology not as a layer, but as a capability.

When the lights dim and CES ends, the real work begins. And for me, the takeaways were clear.

Invest in AI systems that free creative teams to focus on what only humans can do — storytelling, empathy and meaning.

Use immersive and conversational technologies selectively and purposefully — to solve real problems, improve accessibility or add genuine utility.

Design for accessibility first — because what works for Bharat increasingly works everywhere.

And remain cautious about fully autonomous brand decision-making. The smartest systems I saw at CES were hybrid by design, with humans firmly in the loop.

Above all, remember this: technology doesn’t dilute creativity. When used with intent, it sharpens it.

As I flew back from CES, I felt something stronger than inspiration. I felt clarity.

Grateful to be working in a time where imagination can be engineered into reality. Grateful for collaborators who still believe in making the impossible possible. And grateful for the responsibility of bringing these learnings back to teams, clients and young builders in India.

CES 2026 didn’t tell me where advertising is going.

It reminded me why I’m in it at all.