The video production landscape is undergoing the most significant transformation since the dawn of the Internet. By 2026, artificial intelligence will be more than just a tool. It will be the driving force behind how brands create content, engage audiences, and compete.
Artlist, a creative technology company that empowers creators with the latest AI tools, recently announced the AI Trends Report 2026, which leverages insights from more than 6,500 creators around the world and industry leaders such as WPP, Meta, Google, and Mondelēz. The results revealed that 87% of creative professionals currently use AI tools for video creation.
Here are key takeaways from the report on how AI is reshaping the creative industries.
1. Professional quality is now universal
For decades, high-end video production has been protected by huge budgets and specialized equipment. AI video generators remove these barriers, democratizing studio-quality visuals and making production faster than ever before.
Orit Bar Niv, VP of Content at Artlist, said, “When the barrier to creating polished work is zero, the barrier to being memorable is higher than ever.” This report highlights that a creator's strategic vision is more important than their technical skills. As a result, the industry faces a legal existential threat. 63% of creators currently prioritize secure commercial rights and strategic survival over pure production quality.
Artlist is designed to accommodate this change. Artlist's AI suite is commercially safe by default. This makes every image, video, or narration produced ready for use in a professional setting, giving creators true business-ready power beyond basic sophistication.
2. Moving from linear to circular workflows
Traditional production followed a linear path: brief, strategy, creative, and finally production. AI forced this timeline into an iterative loop, where ideation, generation, and refinement all happen at the same time.
Elaf Horwitz, chief innovation officer at WPP, points out that this shift is fundamentally changing the way agencies operate. Teams using AI video tools report creating 5 to 10 times more content with the same resources. The new bottleneck has moved from production capacity to workflow and inefficient decision speed.
Artlist addresses this problem by integrating the entire creative process. The Artlist platform is built as an all-in-one toolkit with AI generation, curated assets, and editing tools in a single environment. This seamless integration allows you to test and execute ideas in hours, radically speeding up your decision-making loop.
3. Prompts are a new production skill
Human values are now living in a creative direction, and taste is more important than ever. “Concept is king,” explains Ira Belsky, co-founder and co-CEO of Artlist. “It's not just about storytelling, it's about the core concepts that guide AI.” The ability to be hyper-imaginative allows for the fusion of styles and elements that were previously unthinkable.
Although concepts are important, the skills needed to translate complex ideas into effective and reproducible AI prompts remain highly specialized. Without accurate and fast engineering, creative output can be inconsistent and time saved in production can be lost in endless rounds of generation.
Artlist provides example prompts, tips, and tools that allow creators to test multiple ideas and reduce the need for perfect prompting language. Style guides and references provide creators with a professional starting point to improve their prompts, thereby transforming complex concepts into high-quality, consistent output.
4. Authenticity 3.0 and the imperative of trust
As this content saturates the platform, viewers will no longer be able to differentiate between what is real and what is generated by AI. This skepticism creates a unique opportunity for brands that prioritize transparency.
The most pernicious form of mistrust is legal uncertainty. Brands are concerned that AI-generated visuals could be unknowingly trained on copyrighted content, putting them at massive reputational risk and eroding consumer trust the moment an asset is challenged.
Artlist directly addresses this fundamental risk by prioritizing ethically sourced and transparently trained AI models. The platform offers a secure commercial license that legally covers usage, allowing users to build campaigns with confidence without legal hesitation.
5. Move away from the scroll a little.
The ultimate counter-trend to digital saturation is the “phygital” era. As content becomes infinite, the rarest and most meaningful value is the actual, human, direct contact that builds connections.
The smartest brands of 2026 are using AI as an idea engine to design unforgettable physical marketing brand experiences and amplify those moments online. The challenge is to ensure that AI-driven ideas remain connected to vast commercially licensed media libraries for seamless online amplification.
Artlist is uniquely positioned to bridge the physical gap. By providing both world-class AI generation and a large licensed library of music, video, and sound effects, Artlist ensures that content created for a physical moment is instantly backed up with all the assets needed for professional, legally secure digital amplification.
Learn more and download the full Artlist AI Trends Report 2026.
This post was created by Artlist. Insider Studio.
