Before Cannes Lions, some predicted that this would be the year when AI-created work would break out at the festival, pointing to the direction the ad industry is heading. For the first time, Cannes Lions added an AI Craft subcategory to the awards. AI was a major topic of conversation on stages in and around the Palais, while major players like OpenAI and Google DeepMind had a notable presence at the festival.  However, this year’s award winners told another story. AI hype has died down. What’s emerged instead is a more nuanced approach to the technology, where AI is used to bolster human creativity. “What impressed us wasn’t simply the use of AI. The novelty has already started to wear off,” Andrés Ordóñez, global chief creative officer (CCO) of McCann and president of the Digital Craft jury, told ADWEEK. He said the work that stood out used AI in service of a bigger idea. “It solved real problems, created new experiences, or unlocked possibilities that simply weren’t possible before. One thing became very clear in the jury room: a prompt without creativity is just an empty prompt,” he added.  A creative shift Across this year’s major award winners, some campaigns used AI in more meaningful ways, rather than as a gimmick. For example, Wisła Kraków Football Club’s “Lucky Fan Index,” which took home the Creative Commerce Grand Prix, saw VML Warsaw develop an AI-powered statistic to calculate how much luck each fan brought to the team. With Google’s “Project Genie,” winner of the Digital Craft Grand Prix, Google DeepMind created an experimental AI prototype that let users generate their own 3D virtual environments. Another AI campaign won big at the festival: the debut Super Bowl ads from Anthropic’s Claude, which ironically mocked AI advertising on rival platforms like ChatGPT. The work took home the Grand Prix, Gold, and Silver Lions in Film — Cannes Lions’ oldest category — as well as a Silver Lion in Creative Strategy. And while the brand was an AI business, the craft was entirely human, created by indie agency Mother London and commercial director Jeff Low. “The trend that we see is AI being used to celebrate and elevate humanity and emotion as an advantage,” Pelle Sjoenell, worldwide chief creative officer of NLS Corp. and president of the Film Lions jury, said at an awards press conference on June 26. “It’s really fascinating that AI is being used to do that. It's a very good tool to protect ourselves when we use it critically.” Ordóñez said this year’s Cannes awards winners reflect “a really important shift in our industry.” “We’ll look back at this moment as the point where AI stopped being the headline and simply became part of the creative process. Like every great tool before it, its value won’t come from the technology itself, but from what creative people do with it.” The new cachet As Anthropic’s winning campaign shows, human craft is gaining cachet as AI loses its novelty. Other work that centered human creativity generated buzz and scored prizes at the festival.  Apple TV’s rebrand by TBWA\Media Arts Lab scored the Design Grand Prix, with a handcrafted glass sculpture filmed in a studio without computer-generated effects. Coinbase’s “Your Way Out” by Isle of Any, winner of the Film Craft Grand Prix, also deliberately rejected AI and CGI in favor of custom sets, 2D-printed costumes, and real actors playing video game characters.  Human craft is in the spotlight more than before, largely as a response to AI, according to Juan Javier Peña Plaza, CCO of Gut.  “When work comes out now, there’s almost a witch hunt. People ask, ‘is this AI?’” he observed. “The AI witch hunt leads to a renewed appreciation for human craft.”  The last year alone has seen a wave of backlash against brands accused of making “AI slop” — the term for low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet — with many marketers instead calling out slop and positioning themselves as authentic antidotes to tech fakery. “Brands are keeping receipts. They’re releasing behind-the-scenes and making-of videos to prove how the work was made. And every time they do, people go nuts, in a good way,”  said Peña Plaza, pointing to examples like Coinbase, whose ad was accompanied by a making-of film. “Ultimately good work still comes down to taste and work that connects with human emotion.” Even as AI companies touted their platforms from Cannes stages, in the jury rooms, the work awarded mounted a defense against the technology replacing humans.  For the Dan Wieden Titanium Lions, considered the festival’s most prestigious prize, jury president and TBWA global CCO Chaka Sobhani praised work where “tech was at the heart of the idea and a neighbor in the most natural of ways.” “The idea was possible because of the tech, but the curation and craft gave it its humanity,” she said at the June 26 press conference. “So everyone calm down