Newsweek has announced the winners of its AI Impact Awards 2025 in Arts & Media, recognizing three companies that use artificial intelligence to enhance rather than replace human creativity. The awards highlight how AI is being deployed across PR, publishing, and filmmaking to increase efficiency, democratize access, and amplify creative output while preserving the essential human elements that drive these industries.
What you should know: All three winners emphasize that AI serves as a powerful tool to augment human creativity rather than eliminate it.
- Interdependence, a PR and strategic communications firm, uses AI for trend identification in PR campaigns, Spines automates publishing processes to make book creation more accessible, and Moonvalley develops AI video tools for filmmakers.
- Each company reports significant efficiency gains—Spines reduces publishing time from 6-18 months to 2-3 weeks, while Moonvalley projects 30-50% cost savings in film production.
- The common thread is democratization: making creative industries more accessible to independent creators and smaller players who previously faced high barriers to entry.
The big picture: These AI implementations represent a shift toward using automation for technical tasks while preserving human control over creative vision and strategy.
- “We really are living at the corner of tech plus human plus innovation,” said Sarah Schmidt, president of Interdependence. “We never will downplay the importance of our humans and their strategy, their creativity, their ability to make relationships and connect.”
- The approach contrasts with fears that AI will replace creative professionals entirely, instead positioning the technology as enabling more people to participate in creative industries.
Key details: Each winner demonstrates different applications of AI across the creative media spectrum.
- Interdependence uses a platform called Interviewed to identify trending topics based on click rates, helping clients like Overtone, a semipermanent hair dye company, capitalize on celebrity-driven beauty trends that generated nearly 79 million impressions.
- Spines automates spelling, grammar checks, page formatting, cover design, and audiobook creation, allowing authors to retain 100% of net royalties while publishing over 2,000 titles in 2024.
- Moonvalley built Marey, the first “clean” AI video model trained on licensed content, giving filmmakers camera controls and lighting adjustments through sketches, storyboards, and photos.
What they’re saying: Industry leaders emphasize that AI enhances rather than replaces human creativity.
- “We are ready to empower authors with the power of AI to help them to boost their writing, to boost their stories [and] to make them reach more,” said Yehuda Niv, founder of Spines.
- Moonvalley CEO Naeem Talukdar compared the technology’s impact to previous film industry innovations: “When CGI first came out, there were these fears that a lot of jobs just aren’t going to be there anymore… However, studios have only increased in size since CGI came out.”
- “With a generative videography model, these are just power tools,” Talukdar added. “Expecting them to replace filmmakers is asinine.”
Why this matters: The awards showcase how AI can address longstanding inefficiencies in creative industries without compromising artistic integrity.
- Traditional publishing and filmmaking have been controlled by elite gatekeepers with high barriers to entry, limiting creative voices.
- By automating technical processes while preserving human creative control, these platforms enable more diverse creators to bring their visions to market.
- The approach suggests a sustainable path for AI adoption in creative fields that enhances rather than threatens human artistry.
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