How 2025 Tested the Balance Between Technology and Taste

As one of the newer studios on the block, 2025 was the year for us at Imagine This to get sharper. Earlier in the year, I was pretty vocal about the level of unprofessionalism creeping into parts of the industry. Single-bid pitches pulled at the eleventh hour. Endless speculative work. Agencies hedging without commitment. A tax many production companies quietly absorb because it’s “part of the game,” and something I’d experienced far too often in my production career. 2025 was the year we wanted to put this to rest. Get better spotting risk earlier. Better at protecting our time, energy, and people. That discipline didn’t eliminate the problem entirely - but it dramatically reduced how often it landed on our doorstep and focus our energy on building opportunities that worked for our business, talent and clients.

2025 was also the year of true mass AI adoption and experimentation in our industry. For me, it really exposed who truly knows how to use AI as a tool for creative exploration (and who has taste!).

I entered the year genuinely concerned that we were about to face big competition, with many holding companies and agencies set to open AI divisions backed by their massive buying power and resources. How were we and our small boutique AI division Made by Humans, which we opened a year prior, supposed to compete? New AI shops seemed to open every week. Some well-funded, some well-branded, most loudly confident. The difference was simple: owning the tools and knowing how to use them are two vastly different things.

Successful use of machine learning to avoid the dreaded ‘AI slop’ requires an in-depth knowledge of the tool, paired with artistry and taste. Successful AI divisions are powered by Directors, Photographers and Visual storytellers - Not prompt monkeys. Not technicians playing creative director…but good old fashioned creatives using new tools with authorship and intent.

That realisation fundamentally changed how I think about competitive advantage.
One of the most important shifts we made in 2025 was how we positioned our AI talent. Our AI artists stopped being treated as operators solving isolated problems and were placed on a pedestal alongside directors, DPs, and other creative leads - responsible for solving the entire project creatively, not just executing a brief.

That shift unlocked trust. Clients stopped asking whether AI could work and started asking how we would approach the work creatively. Less “VFX support,” more commercial-director thinking. Looking ahead to 2026, this evolution continues: our AI artists won’t just be contributors - they’ll be recognised as AI directors, leading projects end-to-end with the same creative ownership we expect from any filmmaker.
2025 was the year we debunked the idea that AI would be some kind of magic button. We saw, very publicly, what happens when speed replaces taste and novelty replaces judgement.