Beyond GenAI: The New AI Debate Heading to Cannes Lions

This story was originally published on MartechAI.com.

For the last two years, artificial intelligence at Cannes Lions has been discussed largely through the lens of creation. Could AI write a script? Could it generate a visual? Could it speed up a campaign? Could it replace the blank page?

In 2026, the question appears to be shifting.

As the global advertising and marketing industry prepares to gather in Cannes from June 22 to 26, AI is no longer just a creative tool on the margins of the conversation. It is becoming the operating layer around which the future of marketing may be organised. The move from generative AI to agentic AI, from tools that create to systems that plan, act, learn and optimise, is likely to be one of the defining conversations at this year’s festival.

Across the Cannes Lions programme, AI-linked sessions feature OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, The Estée Lauder Companies, Instagram and other major industry voices. But the more interesting story is not that AI has arrived at Cannes. It is that Cannes is now beginning to ask what happens after AI becomes normal.

One of the most closely watched sessions will be OpenAI’s “Advertising in the Age of AI”, featuring Denise Dresser, Chief Revenue Officer at OpenAI, in conversation with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. The session framing is telling. It describes advertising as shifting from a “media operating model” to an “intelligence operating model”.

That is a significant change in language.

For decades, advertising was built around channels, formats, audience segments and media planning. In an AI-native environment, the interface itself becomes intelligent. Consumers do not simply search, scroll or click. They ask, compare, learn, evaluate and act within conversational systems.

For marketers, that changes the nature of discovery. A brand may not be competing only for attention inside a feed or on a search results page. It may soon be competing for relevance inside an AI-mediated conversation. That raises urgent questions. How does a brand show up when the consumer journey is guided by an AI assistant? What does media planning look like when the interface is personalised in real time? Who controls the recommendation layer? And how do brands participate without damaging trust?

Dresser’s presence at Cannes is significant because OpenAI is no longer only a technology story. With the former Slack CEO now leading revenue, the company is also becoming a commercial infrastructure story for enterprises and marketers. At Cannes, the industry will be listening closely for how OpenAI positions advertising inside intelligent systems, particularly at a time when marketers are trying to understand where AI fits into growth, customer experience and brand safety.

Another major session, “The Future of Creativity with Demis Hassabis”, will bring Google DeepMind’s Co-Founder and CEO to the Palais. Hassabis is not a conventional advertising speaker. He comes from the world of frontier AI research, games, science and systems intelligence.

That is precisely what makes his presence interesting.

DeepMind’s work has often sat at the edge of what machines can learn, predict and solve. Cannes Lions frames Hassabis’ session around a more nuanced question: how AI can support authentic storytelling while expanding human creative expression.

That distinction matters deeply for marketing. The next wave of AI will not be judged only by whether it can produce more assets faster. It will be judged by whether it makes brands more imaginative, more relevant and more useful, or whether it fills the world with average content optimised for efficiency.

That tension also runs through “The Anatomy of an Icon”, a session featuring Aude Gandon, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at The Estée Lauder Companies, and Nicola Mendelsohn, Head of Global Business Group at Meta. The session asks whether AI can analyse a heritage archive to understand why certain ideas endure.

This is a more sophisticated use case than simply asking a model to generate campaign options.

It suggests AI can become a form of creative intelligence, mining decades of brand memory to uncover emotional signatures, aesthetic patterns and cultural signals.

For heritage brands, this could be powerful. Many legacy companies are sitting on vast creative archives, but those archives are often treated as history rather than infrastructure. AI may allow brands to read their own past more intelligently.

The risk, however, is that brands confuse pattern recognition with creative instinct. Knowing what worked before is useful. Building what matters next still requires judgement.

Meta’s role in this conversation is also worth watching. Over the past few years, the company has positioned AI as a performance and creativity multiplier for advertisers and creators. With Instagram also represented through senior product leadership in discussions around the evolution of creativity, Cannes will likely examine how creator tools, AI-powered experiences and platform-native creativity are converging.

For brands, this is not a future question. AI is already changing how content is produced, distributed, tested and personalised across social platforms.

Beyond the official stages, Cannes is also turning into a live laboratory for AI. PMG’s AI & Tech Sandbox, hosted at Miramar Beach during the festival, is being positioned as a hands-on space for learning, testing and building.

Its programming includes Benedict Evans on technology trends, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on trust and community in the AI era, Pacsun CEO Brieane Olson on operationalising AI for business value, and Luma AI Founder and CEO Amit Jain on the frontier of creative work.

The Sandbox also includes demonstrations, working sessions and a global hackathon, signalling a move from AI discussion to AI experimentation.

Consulting and enterprise technology players are making the same point in different language. McKinsey says its Cannes focus this year is on how AI and agentic systems are rewiring growth, not as theory, but as the operating model behind brands already pulling ahead. Databricks is framing the future around agentic marketing, arguing that customer engagement is entering a phase where unified data and shared intelligence become central to the CMO mandate. Deloitte Digital is taking a similar line, focusing its Cannes presence on agentic AI, omnichannel personalisation and smarter content lifecycles.

Together, these signals suggest that Cannes Lions 2026 may become the year AI moves from creative novelty to marketing infrastructure.

The first phase of generative AI was about outputs.

The next phase is about orchestration.

Instead of asking AI to make a banner, brands will ask AI systems to identify audiences, personalise journeys, generate assets, optimise media, interpret feedback and recommend action.

That future will not be frictionless. It will raise questions about transparency, bias, copyright, agency models, creative ownership, measurement and consumer trust. It may also force marketers to rethink talent. The most valuable teams may not be those that use AI to produce more content, but those that know how to brief, govern, interpret and challenge intelligent systems.

For India’s marketing ecosystem, the Cannes conversation is especially relevant. Indian brands are already experimenting with AI-led content, personalisation, media optimisation and customer engagement at scale. But much of the market is still in the pilot stage.

The global debate at Cannes could help clarify what comes next: not more experiments for the sake of experimentation, but AI operating models tied to business outcomes.

That is why the shift from GenAI to agentic AI matters.

It changes the marketer’s question from “What can AI create?” to “What can AI run?”

It changes the agency question from “How do we use these tools?” to “What role do we play when tools become systems?”

And it changes the brand question from “How fast can we produce?” to “How intelligently can we grow?”

At Cannes Lions 2026, AI will not be the future arriving.

It will be the present being reorganised.

The real winners may be the brands that understand this early: creativity is not disappearing into machines. It is being forced to move higher up the value chain.

Disclaimer: All data points and statistics are attributed to published research studies and verified market research. All quotes are either sourced directly or attributed to public statements.