This weekly update highlights how agentic AI is transforming creative industries across the globe. Agentic AI refers to intelligent computer programs that can understand what people want and take action to complete creative tasks with minimal human guidance. From designing color palettes to creating advertisements and even replacing actors in films, these AI agents are fundamentally changing how creative work gets done in 2025.

In the United States, the advertising industry is experiencing major changes due to agentic AI technology. Google recently demonstrated the power of AI-generated creative content by releasing its first fully AI-generated television advertisement as part of its "Just Ask Google" campaign. The ad featured a plush turkey character navigating the world using AI Mode in Google Search. Google decided not to prominently label this advertisement as AI-made, believing viewers care more about the quality of the story than the technology used to create it. The company plans to release a Christmas sequel to this campaign, showing confidence in AI-generated creative content.

The Coca-Cola Company took an even more ambitious approach to using agentic AI for holiday advertising. The multinational beverage company created their "Holidays Are Coming" campaign entirely using AI agents instead of hiring human actors. Rather than spending an entire year shooting traditional advertisements with real people, Coca-Cola's agentic AI systems completed the project in approximately one month. The company generated over 70,000 different video clips through their AI workflow, with approximately 100 contributors involved including five dedicated AI specialists. This massive productivity gain demonstrates how agentic AI can compress creative timelines, though some viewers noted inconsistencies in visual style and character movement.

Retail and e-commerce are experiencing significant transformation through agentic AI technology. Shopify, a leading e-commerce platform serving hundreds of thousands of online stores, reported remarkable growth driven by agentic AI systems. Since January 2025, the platform has seen seven times more traffic from AI-driven searches. Even more impressively, agentic AI is responsible for 11 times more orders compared to traditional shopping methods. These agentic AI assistants, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity, help customers search for products, compare different options, ask questions, and complete their purchases through natural conversation. Shopify's Shop Pay system, which processes payments for these AI-assisted transactions, handled $29 billion in sales during the third quarter of 2025, representing a 67 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Within Shopify's platform, an internal AI assistant called Sidekick helps store owners manage their businesses, with over 750,000 shops using it for nearly 100 million conversations about analytics, search engine optimization, and daily operations.

Pantone, the globally recognized color authority that has guided creative professionals for over 60 years, partnered with technology giant Microsoft to create an innovative agentic AI tool designed specifically for designers. The new Palette Generator uses advanced artificial intelligence built on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. This agentic AI tool allows creative professionals to have a conversation with the system and receive custom color palettes in just seconds. Rather than manually searching through color options, designers can describe what they need, and the Palette Generator instantly creates suggestions by searching through Pantone's entire library of thousands of colors. The system combines this vast color database with Pantone's trend forecasting research and color psychology expertise, which the company has developed over decades. The Palette Generator understands context and meaning, using advanced techniques called Retrieval-Augmented Generation to find the most relevant colors and design concepts that match what the designer is looking for. This tool represents how agentic AI can amplify human creativity by handling research and initial concept generation, allowing designers to focus on refinement and execution.

In China, the creative industries are experiencing rapid transformation through agentic AI adoption in film and television production. Microdramas, which are short soap opera-style video series with episodes as brief as 30 seconds, represent a massive entertainment category in China, and many production companies are now using agentic AI to replace both human actors and screenwriters. The popular series "Strange Mirror" has been viewed by over 50 million people and demonstrates how audiences are embracing AI-generated creative content. Production crew member Louis Liu, age 27, observed that AI software has already replaced most traditional artists who create concept images during the earliest stages of film production. These concept images define the visual look and style of a film before actual shooting begins. However, this rapid adoption of agentic AI is causing significant concerns throughout China's creative industries about job losses and worker displacement. Some creators remain optimistic, expecting new employment opportunities to emerge, particularly for "prompt engineers" who specialize in writing detailed instructions for AI systems. The expansion of agentic AI in Chinese film production also highlights growing concerns about copyright and intellectual property issues, since AI models are trained on existing creative works that may not have received permission from original creators.

Major technology companies continue to expand agentic AI capabilities. Apple announced that its upgraded voice assistant Siri will receive significant enhancements powered by more advanced agentic AI technology, arriving in spring 2026. Apple selected a custom version of Google's Gemini model to provide cloud-based reasoning for Siri, with Apple paying approximately $1 billion annually for this service. Snap, the company behind the popular Snapchat application, announced a substantial $400 million partnership with Perplexity, an AI search company, to integrate agentic AI search capabilities directly into Snapchat. This integration allows Snapchat users to perform AI-powered searches without leaving the app, with revenue from the partnership expected to begin in 2026.

These global developments demonstrate that agentic AI is rapidly becoming a central tool in creative work, with applications spanning advertising, design, fashion, retail, film production, and voice assistants. While these technologies are helping creative professionals work faster and explore new creative possibilities, they also raise important questions about job security for human creators, copyright protection for existing works, fair compensation for artists whose work trains AI models, and the future role of human creativity in an increasingly AI-driven world.