About AI and other demons: Sxsw is a mirror of the confusion that reigns in marketing

Last Saturday the curtain lowered in Austin (Texas) the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival, which in its latest edition, corresponding to 2025, was more than ever A mirror of collective disorientation (fruit of the uncertainty that having to fight with AI and other emerging technologies) that currently reigns in the marketing and advertising branch. This area of ​​activity is greatly worried how to keep their humanity unalterable in the midst of so much change and at a time when the AI ​​collided inevitably with business models already settled in the market for years and puts on the table important questions of an ethical nature (which some insist, however, in avoiding).

The AI ​​was, how could it be otherwise, the protagonist of a good number of sessions in the latest edition of SXSW, where this technology was approached not so much in technical and social code. Particularly exciting was the debate that was generated within the framework of the event around the so -called physics, the one that goes beyond software and, taking the form of robots and other machines, intervenes in the real world. “This will be the time when AI escapes from the cage and make the leap into the real world,” said Anirudh Devgan (Cadence), whose words sowed to some extent the apprehension between the auditorium.

It is increasingly omnipresent, but AI is a surprisingly alien technology to regulations

Perhaps for this reason, and to try to temper the spirits, Jerome Monceaux, CEO of Ted.ai, later turned with statements in any way trivial: “Ethics is not a last minute idea and should define how we use AI and immersive technologies in general”he emphasized.

In SXSW also emphasized that the way in which AI has radically transformed the way we usually contemplate the data. For decades the property of the data was contemplated as an absolutely decisive competitive advantage. However, now that large language models have prosecuted 99% of the data available on the Internet, this paradigm has definitely obsolete. AND The truly crucial at this time is the possession of proprietary data, that tiny proportion of personal and corporate data that have not yet been used for AI training.

The discrepancy between the deep impact on the society that has AI and the almost total absence of regulatory frameworks of that technology also gave much to speak this year in SXSW. “Without any governance, AI is not just a risk, it is the certainty that one day, sooner rather than later, we will lose control over its impact on society”warned Lawrence, from the Harward University Law.

The increasingly ubiquitous agents of AIthat with their multiple “super powers” ​​(automate tasks, optimize decisions and give wings to efficiency) are already revolutionizing business processes, they also played a leading role in the latest SXSW edition. About them he spoke at the IBM festival, which wanted to make clear in any case that the truly effective use of AI should necessarily support items of “feedback” loops to improve the decision -making process, stop any prejudices and meet the standards in the ethical level.

The mixed reality (XR) leaves its small niche to display the wings

Beyond AI, another technology that slipped in a session plethora in SXSW was the so -called extended reality (XR), that seems to have turned more mature and overcome a good part of the limitations that constrained it once on the physical plane to give bellows to the immersive experiences.

“Creative ‘storytelling’ and immersive experiences can be incredibly powerful when connecting fans and allowing them to live in first person iconic moments or create such moments by themselves”explained Dan Borelli, by Mercury Studios. It seems, therefore, that in a world in which real connections seem more and more complicated to forge, extended reality opens new possibilities in what the generation of interactions is concerned.

The extended battle even in any case with a libade of challenges in terms of hardware and such challenges continue to put sticks on the wheels to the generation of pregnant content really attractive. This technology continues to deal with today with the tension between creation and consumption and between technical possibility and practical implementation.

In SXSW, a reality was also discussed in any way: the growing transience of technical knowledge of flesh and blood humans. That technical knowledge currently has a half -life of just 2.5 years (And probably continues to be contracted in the coming years).

Some believe that to adapt to this new reality, we must turn from specialization to interdisciplinary thinking. And this turn constitutes not only a tactical adjustment but fundamental reformulation of how we contemplate knowledge in itself. In the future, after all, we must prepare not so much to develop a specific ‘expertise’ to embrace adaptability.

Why marketing must give a corner to conventions

On strictly Marketero Andrew and James Mackinnon, founders of the Australian agency The Taboo Group, urged the brands in SXSW to break once and for all with the established marketing rules. “Your target is not interested in whether you are right, you are only interested in whether you are interesting”recalcaron.

From the point of view of the founders of The Taboo Group, In marketing, conventions are translated into conformity and conformity also results in anonymity (which is literally “death” for avid brands of cultural relevance).

In The Taboo Group they are governed by called “Kinetic Growth Cycle of the brands” that is launched by identifying gaps between cultural and categorical expectations, putting down standards to challenge such expectations, and then generating tensions to force the user to position themselves. “If nobody hates him, he probably also loves him”Andrew and James Mackinnon emphasized.

The writer Rohit Bhargava also emphasized SXSW in the need to take a twist to conventions and urged brands to put aside the labels we all know. Barghava also encouraged brands to transcend the borders of conventional demographic targeting, which is, in his opinion, “the most idiot of defining the audience.”