APOS: Serkis, Tull & Saxena on AI's Promise and Peril
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- Andy Serkis, motion-capture pioneer and Imaginarium Studios co-founder, called AI's ability to let young creatives tell stories regardless of means "exciting" but stressed responsible use, speaking from New Zealand where principal photography is about to begin on The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
- Serkis and writer-director Josh Nelson Youssef are developing a mixed-reality experience for Google's Android XR platform; Youssef warned AI raises unresolved concerns around provenance, ecological impact, and what happens when you remove creative "friction."
- Thomas Tull, TWG Global co-chairman and former Legendary Entertainment CEO, predicted AI will drive "the largest transfer of wealth in human history" and warned that some traditionally large, successful companies could become irrelevant within three to five years.
- Tull said firms treating AI as "the condiment on top of the sandwich" will fall behind, and singled out India's AI-driven studio FaiBLE, founded by Columbia Business School graduate Sharad Devarajan, as work worth watching.
- Gautam Saxena, head of APAC corporate finance at ING, said AI "hyperscalers" are now financing computing power, chips, and data centers through debt rather than cash reserves, and that capital demand is still growing.
- Saxena flagged "AI Sovereignty" as a defining issue, predicting countries will increasingly restrict who has access to AI models and noting that concerns about misuse were already surfacing at the conference.
- Asia Partners' Swapnil Chichani said global players will retain an edge in distribution and content creation, while VI Group's David Do argued success depends on getting creatives to use existing technology rather than chasing the latest tools.
Why it matters: With AI hyperscalers financing their compute buildouts through debt rather than cash, the capital intensity of the AI race is reshaping competitive dynamics — and Tull's warning that irrelevance could come within three to five years frames the next stretch as an existential test for media companies. For APAC players, Saxena's "AI Sovereignty" point adds a geopolitical constraint on top of the financial one, meaning access to models may matter as much as access to capital.
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