This weekly update brings exciting and challenging news from the creative industries as artificial intelligence continues to transform how people make content. From video generation to AI-powered design tools, this week shows both the amazing possibilities and growing concerns about AI's impact on human creativity.

The biggest story this week is OpenAI's Sora 2, a revolutionary tool that creates professional videos with sound and realistic physics. Unlike older video tools that just moved pictures around, Sora 2 understands how the real world works and creates videos that look like they were filmed by professional cameras. The tool can make everything from cartoons to realistic movie scenes from simple text instructions. What makes Sora 2 special is that it includes realistic sound that matches the action in the video. The sound is not just noise—it's context-aware and matches what's happening on screen. The demand for this tool was incredible—the Sora iOS app reached over 1 million downloads in just five days, showing how hungry creators are for AI tools that work this well. This explosive growth proves that the creative world is ready for AI technology that produces professional-quality results.

Adobe's huge announcement at MAX 2025 showed that the company is committed to putting AI everywhere in its creative tools. Adobe created new AI Assistants that work inside Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere, Illustrator, and Adobe Express. These assistants can understand what designers want and then handle repetitive and boring tasks automatically. Adobe also made a big deal by partnering with Google Cloud to bring Google's top AI models—including Gemini, Veo, and Imagen—directly into Adobe programs. This partnership means designers can now use multiple AI models inside familiar programs instead of switching between different apps. Adobe also announced new studio-quality generative audio and video tools in Adobe Firefly, helping creators make entire videos from start to finish without leaving Adobe. The company also introduced Firefly Custom Models that let companies train AI on their own brand materials so the AI makes content that matches their style perfectly.

Mondelez, a major company that makes popular snacks sold worldwide including Oreo, Chips Ahoy, and Cadbury, showed how AI can save companies serious money while making better ads. The company created an AI system with help from Publicis Groupe and Accenture that cuts ad production costs by 30% to 50%. Mondelez is already using this AI tool to create social media content for Chips Ahoy in the United States and Milka in Germany. The company also plans to create short TV commercials using AI for the next holiday season and possibly even for the Super Bowl in 2027. This shows that agentic AI is being used to make real business decisions about content creation at huge scales. However, Mondelez built in safety guardrails to make sure the AI doesn't create unhealthy food depictions or stereotypes, and humans check everything before it gets posted. The company invested $40 million in this AI system, showing serious commitment to automation in creative work.

Meta is taking a big step by adding massive amounts of AI-generated content into the feeds where people scroll and see posts. The company's Vibes app has already created an astounding 20 billion AI-generated images. Meta sees AI-created content as the next big era of social media, following the age of friends and family posts, and then creator content. This means that when you use Instagram, Facebook, or other Meta apps, you will likely see more posts and pictures that were created entirely by AI. The agentic AI here means that AI systems are not just helping humans make content, but actually creating and recommending content on their own. Mark Zuckerberg believes this represents a major shift in how social media will work in the future.

Google's Gemini got a powerful new ability to automatically build complete presentations from documents or outline notes. Instead of facing blank slides and spending hours on formatting, Gemini now creates full slide decks with summaries, pictures, data visualizations, and proper layouts. This feature is rolling out first to Gemini Pro users and can turn research summaries, sales pitches, or class materials into professional presentations in minutes. Teams can now spend less time on boring formatting work and more time perfecting their actual ideas and messages. You can edit the presentation right in Canvas or export it to Google Slides to finish it.

Figma, the popular design platform used by thousands of designers worldwide, launched a new tool called Weave that brings multiple AI models together in one place. Weave works like a flowchart where designers can connect different AI tools and editors to create complex creative projects. Instead of jumping between different apps and copy-pasting work between them, designers can now chain together multiple AI tools and see different results side-by-side. This helps teams experiment with different AI approaches quickly to find the best creative solution. Figma describes Weave as a new medium that blends human craft with AI generation, combining image and video tooling into one connected workspace.

Despite all these exciting tools, a new survey revealed that many creative professionals are worried about AI's impact on real creativity. 81% of designers said that they believe AI reduces creativity rather than helping it. This percentage is even higher than other creative workers—only 63% of writers and journalists shared the same concern. These numbers suggest that the people actually using these creative tools every day have real worries about what AI means for human artistry and original thinking. The designers seem to be the most concerned about AI's effect on creativity compared to other creative professionals.

Agentic AI—artificial intelligence that can make its own decisions and complete complicated tasks without a person telling it what to do at every step—is becoming bigger in creative commerce. This week, PayPal and OpenAI announced a partnership that lets people shop directly inside ChatGPT using AI agents. Instead of searching the web for products, comparing prices on different websites, and going through checkout, AI agents can now handle all of that inside a chat interface. This represents a shift in how people will buy things, where AI agents become the actual shoppers rather than just giving recommendations. The agentic commerce trend means that AI can browse products, check prices, understand what users want, and complete purchases all independently.

This week clearly shows that the creative industries are standing at a crossroads. Amazing new AI tools are making video, images, presentations, and ads faster and cheaper than ever before. Companies like Mondelez and Meta are already using these tools at massive scale to create content that would have taken teams of people just months ago. At the same time, creative professionals are expressing real concerns that something important might be lost when AI handles more of the creative work. The creative future will likely depend on finding the right balance between using powerful agentic AI tools and protecting genuine human creativity, artistry, and original thinking.