Louise Holmes, director of global partnerships for Meta EMEA, stressed during a keynote presentation at Content London on Wednesday that artificial intelligence should not be seen as a threat to creativity.
“We must be careful not to deify him or fear him,” she said. “After all, the things we fear most are often the things we understand the least. Personally, I view AI not as a threat but as an opportunity.
At Meta, Holmes’ team supports EMEA’s most influential creators, public figures, media companies, film studios and more to grow their businesses and create impact on Facebook, Instagram and more. Prior to joining Meta, Holmes was EVP of Paramount, Comedy Central and MTV Networks at Viacom CBS UK, where she helped build its young audience.
Holmes highlighted how AI can help creative fields, including democratizing and increasing productivity, improving efficiency, improving global content distribution, and creating more sophisticated insights into content performance. Generative AI will “boost creativity, but importantly not replace it,” Holmes said, adding that she doesn’t foresee AI being able to predict the next big “hit” in the content space, because “the most successful ideas are a kick at something.” bold and left field.
“To be clear, despite its potential, here, creativity trumps AI every time,” she said. “Storytelling, our lost firstborn, will endure, as will the appeal of real lives with all their messiness, imperfections and authenticity.”
Holmes then delved into Meta’s AI roadmap, sharing that the company’s mission is to “build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible.” Meta’s AI assistant is on track to become the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of this year, Holmes said, with 500 million people using it. Building on the Meta and Ray-Ban smart glasses, Holmes announced that they would launch Orion glasses, the world’s first augmented reality glasses, and that they were working on creating AI “twin” avatars that could help creators manage their daily tasks, including responding to DMs.
Other upcoming projects include a feature that can give dating advice, which Holmes said was inspired by “Love Is Blind,” and Meta’s MovieGen prototype, which they are working on with Blumhouse and hope to integrate next year.
“Don’t be afraid of AI,” she said. “Make it a point to understand it, accept it, experiment with it, and make it work for you.”
She concluded: “Maybe next year our future AI twins will be sitting here in our place while we use our time in even more valuable ways.”