Tribeca (Tribeca Festival)

IAB Joins Jupiter Festival Miami as Founding Partner

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has joined Jupiter Festival Miami as a founding partner ahead of the festival’s debut from October 6–9, 2026. William Mellis, Jupiter Festival Miami CEO and founder, said the festival was conceived 15 months ago to explore the future of content across media, entertainment and sport. IAB CEO David Cohen said the organization joined to help shape programming and may secure an IAB-specific stage; this is IAB’s first festival partnership before a launch during Cohen’s six-year tenure. Other partners include Boston Consulting Group and MCH Group (which owns a 20% stake). The festival’s announced speaker lineup includes executives from Tribeca Enterprises, Whalar Group, Known and M+C Saatchi. Organizers aim for a 5,000-person attendance benchmark after high website interest during Cannes Lions week.

Native Foreign Founder Defends AI in Advertising

Nik Kleverov, founder of Los Angeles agency Native Foreign, discusses his role as a prominent advocate for AI-powered creativity in advertising in an interview with The Drum at Cannes Lions. Kleverov describes how the agency pivoted in 2022 after early access to OpenAI’s Dall‑E and how AI tools have become central to its storytelling and production work, while emphasizing that human creative skill remains essential. He outlines the agency’s AI-assisted feature film project Critters — developed with UK production company Vertigo and writers John Foster and James Lamont — and says OpenAI’s discontinuation of the Sora video model earlier this year forced adjustments to the pipeline. Kleverov argues AI will lower production barriers and expand opportunities for creatives despite controversy and personal backlash from some peers.

AI-Generated Feature Debuts at Tribeca

Dreams of Violets, directed by Ash Koosha, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival as the first AI-generated live-action feature accepted into a major festival lineup. The 74-minute docudrama, inspired by the January 2026 protests in Iran, was produced in roughly three months using an entirely AI-driven pipeline (no actors, sets, or cameras). Koosha used tools including Kling AI, Google image models, and proprietary technology for blocking and lens accuracy; he voice-acted and modified audio for all roles. The film’s budget was approximately $2,000, spent on software subscriptions and AI compute tokens. Its selection provoked debate about intent and ethics, while signaling a potential inflection point: generative AI could be adopted by studios as a cost-reduction tool for visual effects, background work, and other production tasks amid an industry-wide push to make content cheaper.