TheWrap and What’s Trending Launch AI Creator Day, Bringing Creators and AI Leaders Together for a New Kind of Summit

Summary:

• Artificial intelligence shapes creativity’s future. Creators, AI companies, and Hollywood converge at inaugural AI Creator Day. Summit explores responsible, creative AI use.

• Keynote conversations, workshops, and creator case studies at AI Creator Day. Attendees engage with cutting-edge technology. Industry leaders unite.

• The event bridges communities in the creator economy. TheGrill conference follows, featuring top executives from major entertainment companies. Future of creativity explored.

Artificial intelligence has become one of the most transformative—and polarizing—forces shaping the future of creativity. Yet the conversations about it are often happening in separate rooms.

Creators are experimenting with new tools. AI companies are building them. Hollywood is debating them. Brands are trying to understand them.

This fall, TheWrap and What’s Trending are bringing those conversations together.

The companies announced the inaugural AI Creator Day, a new one-day summit taking place September 29 at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, ahead of TheWrap’s annual TheGrill conference on September 30.

Co-created by TheWrap founder and CEO Sharon Waxman and What’s Trending founder and CEO Shira Lazar, AI Creator Day is designed to move beyond headlines and hype to explore how creators, storytellers, filmmakers, executives and technology leaders are actually using artificial intelligence today—and where the industry is headed next.

Rather than asking whether AI belongs in creative work, the event will focus on a more pressing question: How can creators use these tools responsibly, creatively and sustainably?

Programming will feature keynote conversations, live AI demonstrations, creator case studies, hands-on workshops, and discussions exploring storytelling, business, ethics and emerging workflows. Attendees will have the opportunity to test new tools, hear directly from creators building with AI, and engage with the companies helping shape the next generation of creative technology.

“I’ve spent the past year watching creators, AI companies, filmmakers and media executives all have separate conversations about the future,” said Lazar. “We wanted to create a space where everyone could come together, experiment with these tools, ask hard questions, share what’s actually working and help shape the future of creativity together.”

An inaugural host committee will help guide the event, including Willonius “King Willonius” Hatcher, the TIME100 AI honoree behind the viral AI-generated hit “BBL DRIZZY”; Ben Relles, entrepreneur and co-creator of Reid AI; Paige Piskin, AR creator and digital beauty innovator; Adrienne Lahens, co-founder and CEO of Infinite Studios and former TikTok executive; and Doug Scott, co-founder of Cinemalistics and UNXNOWN.

Attendance is by invitation, with a limited number of applications available to creators and industry professionals.

The event also reflects a broader shift taking place across media. As AI tools become embedded in everything from video editing and production to storytelling, marketing and audience growth, creators are increasingly leading adoption—not just reacting to it.

For What’s Trending, which has covered the creator economy for more than a decade, the summit represents an effort to bridge communities that rarely gather under one roof: creators, platforms, startups, studios, brands, investors and technologists.

The following day, TheWrap’s flagship TheGrill conference returns with conversations spanning streaming, advertising, sports, media, the creator economy, mergers and acquisitions, and the future of entertainment, bringing together executives from companies including YouTube, Netflix, Disney, Amazon MGM Studios, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Google.

Additional speakers, programming and partners for both events will be announced in the coming weeks.