Media Industry Experts Share AI Insights

I recently attended the 2025 conference for the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA) in Atlanta, and the prevailing mood could be summed up in four words: the sky is not falling.

The Media Industry's Proactive Stance on AI

The DMLA is a crucial organization representing companies that license digital assets like photos and videos. Its members include major players you'd recognize, such as Getty Images, CNN, and Adobe. For years, I've had the privilege of volunteering on its board.

Each year, the conference serves as a meeting of the minds for leaders across the media space. And this year, as you can imagine, artificial intelligence was a primary topic of conversation. However, this wasn't a panicked reaction to a new trend. The DMLA has been actively discussing generative AI with tech giants like Microsoft and IBM since 2018.

Because the media industry was one of the first to be heavily impacted by AI, it has also had a head start in figuring out how to leverage the technology effectively. Based on the insightful discussions, here are the key things I learned about the state of AI in the creative world.

How Creatives Are Surprisingly Adopting AI

The first major takeaway focuses on the very people at the heart of the industry: the creators. The DMLA conference isn't just for the business and news side of media; it also brings together a large number of professional creators.

Contrary to the common narrative of fear and replacement, the discussions revealed that these creatives are embracing AI in ways you might not expect, integrating it into their workflows to push the boundaries of what's possible.