What an incredible week at the AI & Tech Sandbox! We celebrated at our end of Cannes Soirée, with our team, customers, and partners. During the evening, we took the opportunity to shout out the winners of our inaugural global hackathon, who were announced earlier in the day. Huge congratulations to all of the winners for their outstanding innovation, creativity, and teamwork. Here’s to pushing the boundaries of AI and technology 🚀
AI & Tech Sandbox
Marketing Services
Where human insight sets the direction and technology amplifies what’s possible.
About us
Step off the Croisette and into the AI & Tech Sandbox, powered by PMG. Located on Miramar Beach, the AI & Tech Sandbox is a new Cannes Lions destination built for leaders exploring the future of AI, creativity, media, and technology through real experiences, not just conversation. Across the week, guests can experience visionary talks, live demos, interactive showcases, creator conversations. You’ll also experience the inaugural global hackathon in Cannes. We’re inviting teams to compete to turn AI build ideas into practical solutions. The winner will get up to $500,000 in cash to fund their solution. Hear from Steve Huffman, CEO, Reddit, Benedict Evans, Independent Analyst, and Laura Held, Partner, Shamrock Capital Advisors, alongside creators, technologists, and brand leaders shaping what’s next. From morning coffee meetings to afternoon conversations by the beach, the AI & Tech Sandbox creates space to connect, experiment, and build alongside a community of future-focused thinkers.
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https://aiandtechsandbox.com/
External link for AI & Tech Sandbox
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- Marketing Services
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Updates
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The Best in Show winner of the Global Hackathon is Team Bellwether (Bellwether) 🎉 And a big congratulations to our category winners: 🏆 Agentic Discovery - Why Don't Robots Take Me Seriously (RE•CLAIMER) 🏆 Intelligence to Action - Team Bellwether (Bellwether) 🏆 Data-Driven Creative at Scale - Rowads (Latitude) We are also excited to award Distinctions for Innovation to WildMango (Belva OS: Creative Pulse) and Christophe Conil (GEO - The Garden of Emergent Organisms). We received 120+ registrants across 30+ countries, bringing together a diverse mix of creatives, developers, strategists, marketers, founders, and technologists. Some participants arrived with deep technical expertise, while others had never written a line of code before. What united them was a willingness to experiment, collaborate, and turn ideas into action. View the winning entries here: https://bit.ly/4u1dBIn
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Highlights from day 4 at the AI & Tech Sandbox ⚡️ The creator economy took center stage as Jennifer Quigley-Jones, Zachery Dereniowski, Lauri Metrose, and Leah Walker explored how AI, measurement, and evolving audience expectations are reshaping the future of brand-creator relationships. Key takeaway: The future of creator marketing isn't built on one-off campaigns – it's built on long-term partnerships. AI helps creators speed up research and build scale while giving them the freedom to create and build real stories. The conversation continued with How to Survive in a Post-LiveRamp World, where leaders from Lemonade, ID5, PMG, TransUnion, and Aqfer examined what happens when AI agents begin acting on behalf of consumers and what that means for identity, targeting, and advertising. Key takeaway: As the industry moves beyond legacy identity solutions, marketers will need more connected, privacy-first data strategies that prioritize quality, transparency, and interoperability over scale alone. We are open from 8:30 AM - 2:00 PM tomorrow
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AI & Tech Sandbox reposted this
It’s been the best few days ever at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for me personally and for Koddi too. Kicking off with our Canapés and Cocktails Club with SMG and The Drum we brought together retailers from across the US and Europe. We followed that up with great conversations on bridging people and tech (including AI of course) at our commerce media leaders dinner at the AI & Tech Sandbox held in partnership with Ascendant Network. Yesterday Koddi’s co-founder and President, Nicholas Ward interviewed Reddit, Inc. CEO, Steve Huffman on stage - trust, authenticity and community shone through as themes in a world of AI. All the team and everyone who joined us in the AI & Tech Sandbox has found it a calm and (relatively) cool space to spend time and meet. So many people have come up to me and said this is the best space in Cannes. Congrats to George Popstefanov, Rose Marie Adamo and team for pulling off such an impressive experience at PMG’s very first beach space.
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Highlights from day 3 at the AI & Tech Sandbox ⚡️ Steve Huffman, CEO and Founder, Reddit, Inc., took the stage for “The State of Community: Trust, Identity, & Influence in the AI Era”, examining how trust is built online, the role of participation in digital communities, and what influence looks like as AI becomes more prevalent. Key takeaway: "People are magical. I don't know why we're in such a rush to replace them." Steve Huffman's perspective was a timely reminder that while AI can scale information, trust and community are ultimately built through human participation and genuine connection. Buzz Hays, Global Market Lead, TMEG Industries, Google Cloud, explored AI's growing role in entertainment, sharing how emerging technologies are reshaping storytelling and production. Key takeaway: AI's greatest potential in entertainment isn't replacing creativity, it’s expanding what's possible. Buzz highlighted how the most powerful applications of AI come from understanding what creators need and using the technology to unlock new storytelling experiences that weren't previously achievable. Amit Jain, CEO, Luma, delivered a keynote on “Pixels: Executing Creative at the Speed and Scale of AI”, demonstrating how AI is changing the pace and possibilities of creative execution. Key takeaway: Amit argued that AI is democratizing creativity, enabling small teams to produce work at a quality and scale once reserved for major studios. As production constraints disappear, the competitive advantage shifts from execution to imagination. Creator Spark brought together creators and brands for curated networking and collaboration opportunities, while Pinterest and PMG hosted an intimate workshop on co-creating marketing innovation. Tomorrow is our last full day of programming. Don’t miss it! Full agenda here: https://lnkd.in/gSQH7j_J
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What does AI actually feel like to the person on the other end of it? On Monday in Cannes I got to sit down with five leaders at the AI & Tech Sandbox to talk about how AI comes to life for leading brands. We talked about how for AI to come to life it has to happen moment by moment as a real person decides to trust it and determines what is at stake. Picture it from their side. The AI suggests something slightly off. Uses data they don't remember handing over. Gets one thing wrong at the wrong moment. There's no complaint, no churn survey. They just trust you a little less, and use AI to quietly route around you next time. That's why operators have to think differently. The damage doesn't show up in your dashboards necessarily. What we've learned in our research is that AI makes switching easier than ever. Lose someone's trust and they don't announce it. They just stop coming back, and you've already missed the moment, with no idea why. Nearly half of consumers will walk if they don't trust the experience, or feel it's using their data in ways that don't benefit them. This time is exciting because we have a true moment to lean into human insight and create a behavioral architecture that defines how technology will work for our human needs. Ultimately there were four things that we kept coming back to: 1. Implementation has to be human-centric. The tech is the easy part. Whether a person understands it, trusts it, and folds it into their day is where the value is won or lost. 2. It can't live in silos. The brands seeing real impact have one AI strategy the whole company is marching toward. Not a dozen pilots competing for credit. 3. Community is the differentiator. When everyone has the same models, the edge is the people you serve. Listen to them. Learn from them. Continuously. 4. Break the performance-metric habit. Clicks tell you what already happened. The winners are moving to behavioral signal and predictive reasoning. The things a dashboard can't see. The throughline: when the technology is commoditized, understanding humans is the advantage. Grateful to share the stage with five sharp women. Thank you to Parks Blackwell for moderating, and to Brieane Olson, Gina Igwe, Valentina Culatti, and Whitney Magnuson for a genuinely human conversation. #CannesLions #AI #UXResearch #CustomerExperience #OwnTheUnknown
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Just heard Amit Jain, CEO of Luma, pitch at Cannes Lions and this line stayed with me: "AI is very good at producing statistically likely outcomes. Humans are very good at producing things that are not statistically likely." Combine the two, and you get the most creative work ever made. The best of human creativity is still ahead of us. But this train is moving fast. Don't be the last one to board. AI & Tech Sandbox PMG Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity Pierre-Aymar R. Master The Monster
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The future gets practical today. After a week of exploring what's possible, today's conversations focus on what it takes to turn ideas into reality, from emerging technologies and business transformation to the solutions already changing the industry. The winner of the Global Hackathon will also be announced. Tomorrow starts here. 📍 AI & Tech Sandbox, Miramar Beach Full agenda here: https://bit.ly/4wW5mQz
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Day 2 at the AI & Tech Sandbox ➡️ Tuesday’s conversations explored what happens when AI moves beyond experimentation and starts changing how businesses operate, create, and compete. Creator Brandon Baum and Adobe's Simon Morris explored how AI is redefining creativity, from idea generation and production to the future role of creators. The day closed with Robot.com's intimate meetup, where they examined what makes brands memorable in an increasingly AI-driven world. A few standout moments: • "Tools are changing. Human emotions are not." AI is the tool that helps generate content at scale, but this doesn’t mean the work isn’t memorable. The content still comes from human insight, emotion, and storytelling. • The future belongs to builders, not spectators. From vibe coding to AI-assisted creation, the barrier between ideas and execution is disappearing. Shingy and Jennifer Kattula gave a step-by-step guide on how to vibe code well, taking AI adoption past being a workflow aid and towards becoming transformative. • Questlove offered one of the most thought-provoking perspectives of the day: Every major creative innovation, from sampling to streaming, was initially viewed as a threat. The challenge isn't stopping technology. It's creating the right rules for how we use it. View our full agenda here: https://lnkd.in/gSQH7j_J
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AI & Tech Sandbox reposted this
What does AI actually feel like to the person on the other end of it? On Monday in Cannes I got to sit down with five leaders at the AI & Tech Sandbox to talk about how AI comes to life for leading brands. We talked about how for AI to come to life it has to happen moment by moment as a real person decides to trust it and determines what is at stake. Picture it from their side. The AI suggests something slightly off. Uses data they don't remember handing over. Gets one thing wrong at the wrong moment. There's no complaint, no churn survey. They just trust you a little less, and use AI to quietly route around you next time. That's why operators have to think differently. The damage doesn't show up in your dashboards necessarily. What we've learned in our research is that AI makes switching easier than ever. Lose someone's trust and they don't announce it. They just stop coming back, and you've already missed the moment, with no idea why. Nearly half of consumers will walk if they don't trust the experience, or feel it's using their data in ways that don't benefit them. This time is exciting because we have a true moment to lean into human insight and create a behavioral architecture that defines how technology will work for our human needs. Ultimately there were four things that we kept coming back to: 1. Implementation has to be human-centric. The tech is the easy part. Whether a person understands it, trusts it, and folds it into their day is where the value is won or lost. 2. It can't live in silos. The brands seeing real impact have one AI strategy the whole company is marching toward. Not a dozen pilots competing for credit. 3. Community is the differentiator. When everyone has the same models, the edge is the people you serve. Listen to them. Learn from them. Continuously. 4. Break the performance-metric habit. Clicks tell you what already happened. The winners are moving to behavioral signal and predictive reasoning. The things a dashboard can't see. The throughline: when the technology is commoditized, understanding humans is the advantage. Grateful to share the stage with five sharp women. Thank you to Parks Blackwell for moderating, and to Brieane Olson, Gina Igwe, Valentina Culatti, and Whitney Magnuson for a genuinely human conversation. #CannesLions #AI #UXResearch #CustomerExperience #OwnTheUnknown
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