If you work in commercial creativity today, you’ve spent the past year hearing a lot of lofty takes about AI “changing everything”. Most of the time, those predictions are more noise than guidance. So when PJ Accetturo took the stage last week at Upscale—an AI conference in Málaga, Spain, organised by Freepik—what made people sit up wasn’t the hype, but the specificity. He wasn’t talking about some day. He was talking about right now.

PJ is CEO of Genre.ai: a creative studio and production company that uses AI tools to make highly shareable ads and brand content with tiny teams and surprisingly low budgets. And he’s had what can only be described as a chaotic, loud and extremely visible 2025.

Their output has included the infamous AI-generated NBA Finals ad that cost just $2,000 to make; the “depression pill that summons puppies” spoof commercial; and an ad for a David Beckham-backed wellness brand that racked up over 230 million views. PJ called himself, half-seriously, “a viral AI madman,” adding, “as most con artists in the space are—I mean, creative founders—I used to be a commercial director, so I’ve seen both sides.”

As you may have guessed, he’s quite the showman. But here’s the bit that really grabbed my attention. “I do not see a world in which a year from now, million-dollar shoots exist,” he stated. “Not because creativity gets worse. But because execution becomes dramatically cheaper. Brands are going to win, creators are going to win. You’re always going to need a human orchestrator.”

It’s a line that sums up the tone of his whole talk. While he’s not exactly predicting an apocalypse, he is expecting a major recalibration of the entire ad industry.

The ad that broke the timeline

You’ve probably already heard the story in one form or another: the $2,000 AI-generated ad for the trading platform Kalishi that aired during the NBA Finals. It featured strange, meme-ish imagery (a cowboy grandpa, an alien drinking beer, people swimming in eggs) and looked like something conjured at three in the morning during a fever dream. It was also extremely quick and cheap to make.

“It took about 300–400 generations to get 15 usable clips,” PJ explained. “One person, two to three days. That’s a 95% cost reduction versus traditional ads.”

He described the workflow in a way that will feel both ridiculous and oddly familiar to anyone who’s spent the past year experimenting with AI. Write the script in ChatGPT. Ask Gemini to generate a shot list. Feed those prompts into Google’s Veo 3. Then stitch it together in Premiere or CapCut. “Prompts are overrated,” he added. “Storytelling is what matters. You need to convey intent. You don’t need magic spell incantations.”

The important part wasn’t the novelty; it was the signal sent to the industry. TV advertising, not just TikTok content, can be made this way now.

Collapse of the apprenticeship ladder

One of the sharpest moments in the talk came when he spoke about a childhood friend who’d dreamed of working at Pixar. “He finally got there. I asked him what he was doing. He said, ‘I am the backlighting assistant renderer. Any time there’s a moustache man, I am on that for months.’ I asked, ‘Is that what you wanted to do when we were kids?’ And he just said, ‘Well, no. I wanted to write and direct.’”

There was laughter, but then quiet recognition. So much of the creative industries has been built on apprenticeship ladders—extremely slow, extremely narrow ones—where you wait, and wait, and hope someone retires or remembers you exist.

PJ believes that AI is making that ladder mostly irrelevant. “The people who can think like directors and storytellers no longer need permission from a studio, a crew, or a massive budget. Underdogs can disrupt the space now. If you’re willing to be bold where others are scared, you can hit way above your pay grade.”

This isn’t a “kids in bedrooms will destroy Hollywood” rant. It’s a shift in leverage. The barriers to testing ideas (which used to be money) are now mostly taste and the amount of time you have to experiment.

Why brands suddenly care

The most interesting part for working creatives came when PJ explained why brands are actively seeking AI-powered work rather than resisting it. He said, quite dryly: “Hollywood is a two-year cycle. TikTok is a two-day cycle. Advertising is now closer to TikTok than Hollywood.”

Brands are no longer only buying polish; they’re buying speed and cultural timing. To get that, they need production processes that can keep pace with the cultural conversation. And AI isn’t just cheaper; it compresses the timeline.

However, this only works when AI use is meaningful. “You need to give the audience a reason why you used AI,” PJ stressed. “If your ad looks like something you could have shot normally, it won’t perform. But if the viewer can instantly see that this could never have been shot practically, then you’ve earned attention.” In short: go weird or go home.

How should creatives respond

So what does this all mean for us creatives? For all his manic energy, PJ’s message about craft was surprisingly traditional. “The most defensible skill is writing and directing,” he said. “Even as parts of the workflow automate, you still need someone deciding what feels right.”

He doesn’t think, in short, that everything will become automated. But he does think scripts, storyboards, and shot lists will increasingly be auto-generated starting points. The director, the editor and the creative lead will still shape everything; they just won’t need 60 people beneath them to make it real.

His conclusion? “Figure out your genius. Don’t isolate. Collaborate. The riches truly are in the niches. If you make great spec commercials, brands will find you. If you make funny spec commercials, they will hire you. It is really that simple.”

So what does the future look like? Not fewer creatives. Not cheaper art. Not generic sludge. Instead: smaller teams, faster workflows, stranger ideas, and more opportunities for people who previously didn’t have access to large budgets. The people who win are the ones who experiment early, share openly, and don’t cling to production hierarchies that made sense when cameras cost more than cars.

“We are still so early,” PJ reflects. “But the people who move now are going to shape what this industry becomes.” Because in his view, a year from today, the ladder is going to look very different. And the people climbing it won’t be the ones waiting for permission.