Culture & Code for 30 May 2025
Creativity and Artificial Intelligence
This is Culture & Code, a weekly newsletter and podcast about Creativity and Artificial Intelligence. Culture & Code explores innovation across storytelling, technology and audiences to help creative professionals collaborate better with AI and each other.
When creation is trivial, craft becomes everything
Amateurs often talk about storytelling and AI as if they live in separate worlds—one ruled by emotion and imagination, the other by logic and systems. Professionals know the magic happens in-between. Navigating the liminal space between a starting point and a final output is the craft aspect of any creative endeavor.
Craft sits between imagination and implementation. Whether you’re telling a story or building a system the goal is the same: the final result must make sense, and it must make someone care. Craftspeople accept this challenge knowing a.) they have incomplete information, b.) the first version(s) won’t survive unscathed, and c.) perfection is unattainable but is a goal nonetheless.
Creation has become cheap and easy courtesy of AI. That’s a wonderful thing just like mechanical power can do so much more with electricity. However, taste and skill to make something memorable remains a scarce commodity. Be thankful that’s true.
Turning an idea into an experience that matters to someone else has been hard work from cave art to cinema.
Before we launched the Seattle AI Film Festival in 2024, we watched thousands of AI-generated films from around the world. Many looked impressive on the surface, but very few stayed with us. Most weren’t really stories at all. They were tech demos—cool to look at, but easy to forget.
This isn’t a criticism of the artists or the engineers. It’s a reminder of how hard it is to create something that resonates over time. AI allows us to scale, remix, and automate at levels never seen before. But a craft attitude is what turns such power into meaning. It’s the common ground where storytellers and developers learn from each other and build a better future.
A better future isn’t about what to create. It’s about deciding what’s worth creating.
C&C Conversation with Renard T. Jenkins
At this year’s Seattle AI Film Festival, we sat down with Renard T. Jenkins—President and CEO of I2A2 Technology Studios and Labs and Vice President of the Hollywood Professional Association. What followed was a wide-ranging but deeply personal conversation about creativity, technology, and the future of storytelling.
Renard brings over three decades of experience straddling the worlds of film production and emerging technology. From his earliest days as an unpaid intern on-set to his studio leadership roles in post-production and animation, Renard has been guided by one question: how can technology help artists focus more on their art?
In this conversation, Renard speaks about his first encounters with AI and how curiosity led him from automation to machine learning, and now to building tools and studios that empower creators. He shares how his company combines neuroscience, media psychology, animation, and product design to build thoughtful, inclusive creative tools. And he explains why diversity in datasets—and in storytelling—isn’t just a moral issue, but key to building better AI and better stories.
Above all, Renard speaks with clarity and conviction that if we want a creative future that’s inclusive and full of wonder, we must build that future on purpose—not assume it will happen.
👉 CLICK HERE for the podcast interview with Renard T. Jenkins.
👉 CLICK HERE for the video interview with Renard T. Jenkins.
AI Movie Night during Seattle Tech Week July 30
The Seattle AI Film Festival (SAIFF) will host AI Movie Night during Seattle Tech Week on July 30, 2025.
We’ll curate 4 category winning AI short films with comment and presentations from award winning AI creators and technologists about filmmaking as a craft and career under a new paradigm. The audience will be exposed to top rated short films made with AI plus insights and frameworks from the people making them.
What to expect at AI Movie Night:
- 4 World Class AI-powered short films
- Live commentary between films
- Special presentation from a leading creator/studio and creative AI tech company
- Networking at the center of Storytelling & AI
- Launch announcement of the SAIFF 24hr AI Film Challenge in late October 2025
If you’re a creator, a technologist, a strategist, or a fan, you can’t miss this opportunity to see the future and connect to a growing community of creative AI innovators.
Registration opens on June 23. You can check out the full lineup of events at the Seattle Tech Week lu.ma page.