Upscaleconf, an AI creativity event in Málaga
Earlier this year, Antonio Banderas and Domingo Sánchez founded Sorhlin Andalucía in Málaga, a cultural space where the Freepik-hosted Upscale conference is taking place this week.
I was surprised to see such a big and well-organized event happening here, in Málaga, my hometown, and I hope this serves as a precedent for other events to be hosted here.
Speaker talks followed Linus Ekenstam's opening.
The overall sentiment is that current AI offerings allow creatives to create faster, better, cheaper, and easier, and we should find responsible ways to use AI.
Martin LeBlanc (Freepik) believes creating with AI still requires creativity, but creating is easier than before.
"The industry is [currently] focused on faster and cheaper output, not breakthroughs," says Hugo Barbera (HumAIn). "We are settling for replication more than transformation."
Some startups that presented productize AI to automate specific workflows, such as portfolio creation (Journo) or face anonymization (Piktid).
Nick Coronges, R/GA's CTO, feels that AI isn't disruptive (yet), and we're creating the same stuff as before, just faster and cheaper. Coronges works with well-known brands, and I loved their Google Android rebrand, which surfaces some of AI's yet-to-come transformational uses. R/GA developed a set of polymorphic AI models capable of creating infinite Android design configurations with "fixed structural rules [and] open-ended outputs within those constraints." Nick believes 2025 will be the year of AI rebrands.
George Eid (Area 17 Founder) warns us about perpetuating bias, loneliness, laziness, and technology's limitations and misleading nature—privacy, security, equity, disinformation, and well-being are in danger.
Before the end of the morning session, Justin Hackney (EleveLabs) asks if, when a creation moves you, it matters whether the artifact was created with AI, which brought back Seth Godin's saying that what matters is impact, not effort.
A fundamental transformation is coming.
