Community Table: AI and the Agency Shifts: What Artists Need to Know

Speaker A: Hi, welcome to the Community Table, a new podcast hosted by me, Heather Elder of, uh, Heather Elder represents, and me,

Speaker B: Kelly Montez of Apostrophe.

Speaker A: If you've been in the industry for a while, you might remember the original Community Table series I co hosted with Kate Chase. From 2012 to 2017. It was a space for producers, creatives and industry leaders to gather and talk openly about the work, the challenges and the changes we were all navigating at the time.

Speaker B: And in 2026, there's no shortage of things to talk about, from AI and evolving client relationships to the way content is being created.

Speaker A: That's why we decided to bring the Community Table back, but this time as a podcast. Kelly and I will co host, reflecting on the expanding conversations we're having every day with our artists, producers and creatives shaping what comes next. Whether you're a seasoned producer, a, ah, curious creative, or just someone trying to figure out how to thrive in this changing landscape, there's always room at the table.

Speaker B: Hello all. Uh, today is May 8, 2026, and welcome back to the Community Table. We're here today with Maddy Nada, senior art producer at Anomaly, and Denise Knickerbocker, freelance art producer. This is our second conversation focused on artificial intelligence, something that continues to move very quickly across our industry. In our last discussion, we created space to slow things down and listen. Today with Maddie and Denise, we're going to continue that conversation. They're two agency producers who are sitting close to the work as all of this unfolds. And we've invited them here today not because they have definitive answers, but because they're in it, hearing what clients are asking for, navigating new expectations, and thinking through what this moment means for the artists and collaborators they work with every day.

Speaker C: What feels especially important right now is making room for real perspectives before everything gets overly defined. This isn't about whether AI is good or bad, or about having a fully formed point of view. It's about understanding what people are actually encountering, what questions are coming up, what feels uncertain, and how ideas around authorship, ownership and artists rights are starting to shift. We're here to listen, to learn, and to better understand what this moment looks like from where you sit. We're really grateful to have both of you here with us. Let's get into it.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker C: How are you guys?

Speaker D: Great.

Speaker C: So let's start with you, Maddie.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker C: The first question I have is from where you sit inside your agency. I am curious where AI is actually showing up for you right now.

Speaker E: Or maybe not at All, I think, at least internally, there's a lot of different places we're using it. I think creatives, I think are the first ones to kind of jump on the AI bandwagon and sort of figure out how that works visually with comping things up and trying to represent their ideas appropriately. Between producers and creatives, we're working together in a certain way to make sure we're not presenting anything to clients that's unreasonable or um, unobtainable. But it's also helped us a lot, um, to share like a proper representation of what we want to create to our clients, um, making it easier for them to buy ideas and want to move forward with what we want to create. But I think producers and you know, other departments are starting to use it a little bit more for decks and trackers and sort of organizing data and information. Things that used to take us, you know, a lot of time, um, has now been, um, streamlined a little bit with the use of AI. So um, I think it's different tools and every department is kind of using it in a different way.

Speaker C: Is that the same thing for you, Denise?

Speaker D: Well, it is. As a freelancer, it's interesting because I come in usually focused on one particular project, so I don't have the day to day operations of how agencies run necessarily and then also not physically being in the office, that's a whole other experience. So it is very much siloed into the project that I'm in. But the teams I'm working with are very active in pursuing how AI tools can benefit them and be utilized within the agency. Um, whether that's storyboarding, pulling images. Like I did this for a current campaign where we were looking for an image and we could not find the right color base for it. Right. So I just mocked up the image off of Shutterstock, modified it using AI tools that were provided, presented that to the clients and they like that look and feel. So it's being utilized when we're not able to find imagery that we need. Mhm. And then the agency in and itself is really pursuing broader scale AI resource tools for creative capabilities.

Speaker C: So what about your clients? Are your clients requesting that you kind of consider AI first or investigate it or you know, are they curious about it? Are they anti it? Uh, what, what's coming from your clients?

Speaker D: The clients I'm working with, they have a few global brands and one is very active in pursuing the capabilities of AI for their particular brand. So there is that request, strong request to um, move forward to explore it. How can these assets Benefit them. What are the pros and cons? What are the legal concerns and time frames? Right. We want to compare. Does AI really save time and costs? So those are things that we're exploring right now. Um, but is being definitely requested by one of the clients strongly requested.

Speaker C: And how about for you, Maddie? What are you finding on your end?

Speaker E: I think clients, at least the clients that I've worked with recently, um, have not asked us to use AI or, you know, discover anything about it. It's really us kind of bringing them something that was made with AI and kind of educating them on what we've done to use AI, how this tool could help us, how, you know, this visual representation of our idea was created with AI. Um, so it's been more so like us being able to take our knowledge of these tools and share it with our clients versus our clients asking us to use AI. Um, I think a lot of our clients haven't really breached that, you know, AI sphere yet, at least in the creative work. Um, so we're. We're kind of at the start of having those AI conversations with them. Um, and we're starting to do that just by using AI in our. In our comps, in our visual representations of things. So it's interesting to see the dichotomy of, like, our clients and Denise's clients, where, you know, I think some brands are really pushing AI and they want to see how it can be an efficient tool in our work streams, how it can save time for us potentially. And then some clients are very much like, you know, in the traditional way of working, um, and are sometimes fearful of. Of us using AI at all.

Speaker C: Who drives when you have an AI request? Meaning who is creating the work from AI? Is it. Are you hiring outside vendors for that? Or is it the creatives? Is it internally, other people? Denise, what are you finding?

Speaker D: Basically, the lead creative heads are exploring bringing that in house with tools that they're contracting with, um, possibly another vendor, but they're trying to do it primarily in house with tools that are available.

Speaker C: That's really interesting because Kelly and I were just talking about this on an AMA AI, uh, committee call that. It's a challenge for those of us on our end, because where our artists used to be brought in to collaborate and work on these projects, they're not being invited into the room right now. Um, and they have the capabilities, they're able to do the work, yet they, um, are getting kind of passed over. Yeah, because the agencies or the holding companies are, you know, keep trying to keep it in internal.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, so it's, it's a really interesting shift.

Speaker B: Maddie, do you think that's also just because it's accessible, that the creatives are going first, not necessarily because of a mandate, but because they want to learn?

Speaker E: I think it's more so the ease of creating something. You know, I think it's. For many years I think it's been uh, difficult for creatives to be like this is what we want to create. This isn't exactly what it looks like, but that's great because it doesn't already exist in the world or creating something new. And a lot of times that's been hard for clients to get on board with because they can't actually see the final product the course created. But I think with the help of AI creatives have found a lot more success with our clients buying different ideas when they're able to kind of show them, you know, an almost finished product before they buy it. Um, and that's been able to get our clients, you know, over the line and allow us to produce it. I think there are some cons to that approach, especially as a producer because we're then trying to create something that isn't actually real. But I think from a creative standpoint a lot of them are using it to give the best visual representation of what they want to create and less so about like trying to, you know, educate our clients on, on AI tools.

Speaker D: Can I add to that? I do think there will be a period, um, where there will be a collaboration between what is being shot practically and what the end result will be with AI. A combination. Where there's a project I have. Currently we don't have access to a location and so one of the options would be creating this very elaborate location. But I had discussed this. Let's, let's bring the photographer in, let's do a, uh, consultation prior and a joint creative exploration of what this could be, what needs to be shot practically, whether it's in a studio.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: But bringing them in from the get go with a potential AI vendor creating the final asset, that that collaboration is definitely very, very important. And I think that will be a path forward for AI assets, especially the more elaborate they get and fantastical that they get. Um, you still want to shoot hopefully talent and something practically, but bring in the collaboration with all artists.

Speaker C: The photographers do understand the lighting and the composition and how to integrate and composite all of the pieces and AI is not consistent. Right. So the more you iterate with it, you m. You're not always Getting the same result, it's very hard to be consistent and get the same result time after time. So having a photographer involved who can maybe provide photographic elements for what you need, um, is also a way in.

Speaker D: Absolutely. Especially with motion, because we're doing so much everything is stills, motion, social content. So we're having the photographers directing talent, which is so vital to get that smooth transition and in creating that action. And then it maybe goes into an AI, um, environment. But yeah, I think collaboration is key and will continue, um, and become part of creation of assets.

Speaker E: I think that point you made about consistency, Heather, we're kind of learning how to work in this AI space where we're like, okay, we don't actually know how much time it's going to take us because it could come out inconsistent. You know, I don't know how long it's going to take for us to fix these inconsistencies that AI produces. So we're kind of having to ask clients to just hold our hands a little bit and trust us that, uh, eventually we'll get there. But it may take a little windy path to get from point A to point B.

Speaker B: That brings up a question. As you talk about these iterations of AI. Are there specific, like enterprise tools that you are having to use? And, and when those changes happen to where talent comes out different, what does that look like from a, uh, from a usage perspective? And are clients open to having that conversation and understanding that that essentially creates a new image?

Speaker E: They're taking a little bit of a slower time, understanding that just because there are so many components to it, like it's not black and white, there is a little bit of a gray area when it does come to that usage. So you're kind of in this weird middle ground where you're trying educate the client, but they're not totally there yet and the artist is fully there, um, and the AI tool is kind of creating something else. So you're kind of the messenger of all of these things, hoping that each party kind of understands where each one is coming from, but you're not necessarily getting to a resolution on usage quickly.

Speaker C: Derivative works is not new. No, uh, like we all known what that is and we know that creating work from existing work will is different usage and fees and things like that. Do you think that because clients are just thinking AI is this new tool and therefore they should own the like. I'm just truly curious what the confusion is.

Speaker E: I think because AI is not a person creating derivative works intentionally, like it's a computer, it doesn't necessarily feel ownable. So I feel like when clients are discussing derivative works with AI, they're not necessarily feeling like this thing that AI created was. Has some type of ownership over it. Um, and I think because there really is no, like, strict legal line of like, who owns things that are created by AI, clients are kind of just living in that gray area.

Speaker B: Denise, do you also think that some of it has to do with just the accessibility of AI and how easy it is to create the derivative works that leads to clients to. To feel this way?

Speaker D: Yes. They look at it as it's so easily accessible and they're possibly playing around with it like a lot of us.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker D: Or we jump on chat GPT. Everyone uses that where it's so familiar now, and it produces content so quickly. I think it's a mindset. I don't think they think about the legal aspects of it, um, rights, usage rights. So I think it's that understanding of, yes, that is accessible to everyone. But when you're looking at creating content and producing content and you want to make sure there's legal clearances, where are images sourced? Do you have rights to things? Those are my biggest concerns with all of it.

Speaker C: Usage and risk exist on two different planes. So there's the risk involved with when you're using talent and when you're creating new derivative works and all of that. Right. That's the make sure everybody's clear on what happens, what the language is around all of that. But there's also the other plane of when you use AI tools, you're not protected or indemnified with using those tools. You are using tools that have trained on images and likenesses and plenty of things and songs and, you know, everything that's already out there in the world. Yes, there's that. So if you are agreeing to use a tool to create, whether it be a background or derivative work or whatever it is, there's risk there.

Speaker D: And that indemnification has been a conversation, um, myself and a colleague have been flagging, um, from the inception of the request from the client to explore it was how do we indemnify the vendors, the resources, the agency?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm curious, Mari, like, I've been talking to Business affairs more than I ever have in my career. What are those conversations like for you with your legal department and the contracts that are coming through? Are they open to mutual indemnification? To vendors like Heather and myself who say, like, we can do this, but we can only take it so far.

Speaker E: Yeah, we are Having a lot of conversations about contractual language, um, especially as it pertains to like, you know, work for hire or, um, something where clients, you know, own the rights to what we're creating. I, um, think there's a lot of. There are a lot of artists that want to protect their work as they should from. From AI learning and those tools that are, are using their work like that. And so BA is coming in a lot on those contracts and photography contracts and production contracts to figure out what AI language is possible to get through our clients. I think some clients want to accept the AI language and some clients don't because of how it hinders the usage. So I think that it will continue to evolve and there will continue to be conversations, but BA has definitely been involved.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because it's. It breaks my brain a little bit because I'm like this. People will say to me, well, you know, work for hire. And that's the industry standard. And I'm like, well, we can't necessarily apply a standard to something that never existed before. We have to have a conversation about it. For my company, apostrophe and for our artists, we look at it as like, okay, well, even if we did grant work for higher usage, that's to use the deliverable M, but not to then go and train the machine. We have to be able to keep our sauce secret so that you want to hire us in the future. And, and so we get the opportunity to be on M. On set with you and make that, that magic. Denise, I know you as a freelancer, go around to different agencies. Is my perspective crazy?

Speaker D: No, no, it's not. It's not crazy. It's this. I just say it's this nuanced dance and it's all about communicating what the need is. Right? Because each project is different, right? As you step into it, what is the usage, what is the need? And then trying on the, um, other end of that, being respectful of the artist and what they bring to it and wanting to make sure that is brought to life. But there's this nuance where you will have an agency account side saying, I need, I need this full asset and I need to have it in this capacity, which may not always align with our, uh, traditional approach to things where it's a usage for three years or what have you.

Speaker C: Talking about. That whole work for hire aspect. You know, in my experiences with photography right now with motion, work for hire is a given, right? But the work for hire around photography was very rare for a Long time. It was very, very, very rare. And there were very specific instances when it happened. And then it started to creep in a little bit more for. Again, for very specific reasons. Now it's something that is being asked, um, obviously more and more, and I

Speaker D: just kind of want to put out

Speaker C: there to people who are listening. Especially if you're an artist, you can agree to work for hire, of course, if you want to, but it is so important to understand what you're agreeing to and to put language around it to say whether or not it does include AI learning. Um, it's just so important to understand what comes next when you're agreeing to that.

Speaker B: On that point, Heather, whenever clients come to me and ask me for a buyout, I'm often asking, what does that mean? And it's you being the interpreter of how. How are they interpreting this work for hire clause? Or how are they interpreting this buyout clause?

Speaker E: Yeah, they. I, uh, think for. For when we're trying to educate our clients if there's any. If there's any deviation from the traditional work for hire usage as they know it, trying to get them to understand that adding certain AI language is deviating from the traditional. And here's how. And here's what this does to your understanding of the traditional usage.

Speaker C: And along the lines of the AI language, this is something Kelly and I talk about a lot of. Is this idea of the work, whatever's being created with AI doing so within a walled garden. Right.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Uh, but at the same time, an enormous problem in our industry is that we don't have any tracking mechanisms at this point. Yeah, we can track usage. There are tools out there that our artists can, say, upload images and say, have these images been used out of license and these online tools can find it? Right. We can see it out there in the world if you just take parts of our image, or the soul or the idea or the style of our image, and you're creating drip that works from it and you put it out there, we can't find that. So there's not. And I know there are things in the works for that, but there's nothing yet. As an artist, the language is so important and copywriting your images is so important, because if any, if you're going to have any recourse, it's just important to have all that figured out.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: And we have put in our photography and talent contracts as many guardrails specifically called out, like, no AI learning kept within a walled garden. We really specifically put that in our contracts for Everybody.

Speaker B: It warms my heart, though, to even hear that those conversations are happening and that a term like walled garden is being put into a contract, I think, on our side. And I'm curious, like, what does that post process look like? How is an artist's images protected within a walled garden, uh, at an agency, Are you able to share any of what that looks like for us so that people can feel confident in that process?

Speaker D: Yeah, it actually, for me, my experience, it has not yet happened where we've done a shoot with photography and talent, with aius, and so we're not even there yet. We haven't even awarded. We've just been the contract negotiations and bidding, and we're due to award any moment. But we just have put in, um, the contracts and through the conversations, how we intend to use it with just modifications, maybe animating stills, things like that. We're trying to be as clear as we can be. We also have protections, like, for talent. We will not change your skin tone. We will not change your body shape. We will not change your hair color. We will not, you know, do anything that's disrespectful, um, to any of the assets that we have.

Speaker E: It is hard to track, though. I think that's, uh. I think it circles back to that thing that we were talking about with risk, like, because there is such a hard way to track it, you know, how will anyone know it? It kind of takes away that level of risk for a lot of people because there isn't a very clear, um, consequence to that or. Or anyone finding out that you're using it for AI learning. Not to say that anyone is. Is doing this, you know, intentionally. I wouldn't want to believe that. But, you know, I think there is less risk there because there is no way to track what's being used.

Speaker D: Where.

Speaker C: We should all have a. Everyone, everyone listening, everyone speaking, everyone having their own conversations, raising their hand, working on the contracts, all of it. Like, we should just have, like, a collective applause and, like, a pat on everyone's back of, like, just taking this on is an enormous lift in that, like, you. I feel like sometimes I get five steps ahead and I'm like, 10 steps back. Yeah. You know?

Speaker E: Yes.

Speaker C: So it's good that we're all asking questions and. And working together and trying to collaborate together to find out these answers. Yes.

Speaker D: You know, it's like a ball of yarn. You pull it and you're like, what about this? What about this? What about this? And then you're like, okay, all right. Why don't we just compensate everybody up front because we can't control the, you know, the ball of yarn. So let's just compensate, have everybody clear from the get go, continue to shoot as much as we can and compensate people for that use.

Speaker B: That Denise, is like, you hit the nail on the head. I think that there's so much fear that we're not going to have the opportunity to collaborate. All four of us know the magic that happens on set when you're in a creative flow state and how you get these beautiful happy accidents that lead to such authenticity. Are there times in the agencies of like, do we need to slow this down just a little bit?

Speaker E: I think in my experience, especially with Anomaly, I don't have a ton of fear around, you know, my job being taken or artist jobs being taken. I think to your point of like there is a magic and I think because AI feels so prevalent and just like all around us there has then been this, this resurgence of having something authentic and producing something authentic, um, and capturing those real moments with real people, with a real artist on a real set or a real location. I think the, the difference in the, in the AI produced work and the authentic work is, is very obvious, at least to me. Um, and I think our clients and Anomaly as an agency is very dedicated to craft, um, and creating real things. And we want to work with artists who do create real things and shoot and we want to go on set and we want to produce something. We want to get real talent, real people in front of the camera. And I think because of this AI um wave, it's really pushed everybody else that works in the industry to have so much more drive to create something real um, and create something with craft. Like the um. We just created a Super bowl ad for Liquid IV with these toilets singing um, which probably easily could have been made with A.I. um, but it was all real, it was all created in camera and um, I think there's, there's a lot of applause at least within the agency to, to do the extra effort to create something real and, and craft that um, and it, I think it shows in the work and um, people do appreciate real things.

Speaker D: Well, I was going to ask both you and Kelly what your experience has been with your jobs and people coming to you going, yes, we are using AI or is it scaled back? Is it a pre negotiated rate? How are your, how are the art producers approaching you with their scale and scope and needs in the last six months?

Speaker C: Do you want to go first Kelly?

Speaker B: Sure, I'm happy to. It's really about post production. And that's the conversation that I'm trying to have. And there's. We keep clarifying the AI terms in our contracts because I want people to know like I'm here for it, I am curious about it. And we have used it within post production processes. We have used it within production as well to meet a client's budget, to meet a timeline and you know, goes back to again being curious and trying to find the most efficient way forward, spending the money and spending the time where it needed to be. So for us it's really about that post production process. It was a job that we were on where the client just needed some slight movement. We were shooting a lake. They wanted the lake to move. It didn't make sense to bring in a videographer and take time out of the day. And it wasn't that big of a portion of the shoot. And we were able to do that within post production tools. And that was a derivative work. And we had that conversation and that was great. That felt like a win for everybody because it also made the day for the cross crew. They could focus on other things.

Speaker C: The only thing I would add to, I'm having that same experience and uh, I don't really need to repeat it, but I am also experiencing clients that are creating AI backgrounds and we're being asked to photograph talent for those AI to be composited with those AI backgrounds. So um, and I am having conversations around how AI is being used and artists aren't being invited in. So you know, when we. I don't know if this is such a great example, but when we moved from portfolios to websites, I no longer was able to know if anyone was looking at my artist's work. So I feel like what's happening. I'm feeling fortunate that I am having conversations with people right now and they're telling me these things because otherwise I wouldn't know know that we aren't being invited into the room, that there are things that are being created through non traditional channels.

Speaker B: We've shot a lot on volume walls this year. So we've created the backgrounds and then shot the talent against the volume wall.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: In ah, order to create that play on light. Which has been really an interesting production process. I think we've done like four already this year. Which is kind of crazy.

Speaker E: When you guys are negotiating that AI language upfront in your client contracts, is there ever a point where you take yourself out of the running or say like, you know, if, if a client can't agree to this AI language, like, we're going to pass on this job. Thank you so much. And what has that conversation looked like for you?

Speaker C: It's, uh, happened a couple times for me. One was with a big brand and there was absolutely no negotiating around it and they were fully out there. We will use your imagery to create new imagery and, you know, train other, uh, photographers. Like they were very clear what they were planning on using it for. They also had the other terms that were not agreeable to us. Like they weren't giving advances and they were paying in 120 days. Like, so the collective conversation around working with this client was a, uh, easy no, right? Like me and the artist were like, this is not possible. If you cancel, you're not going to pay me and I still have to pay my crew. Like, we can't work for you. But I've had some other harder ones where we were being contracted to create something and we needed to use certain tools, certain AI tools, and we wouldn't be indemnified, they wouldn't indemnify us, and we had to say no. And that was a hard conversation with the artist because they believed it and they knew that they couldn't do it, but they were so bummed that they had to turn down a job.

Speaker B: We've had a couple of jobs that have come in. I mean, there's this tendency to hire photographers through production companies. And so, uh, apostrophe is a production company. So we don't always work in that way. But sometimes we'll have a production company come to us and they want to hire our photographers. And there's been a couple of times where the producers have gone out, they've gotten the job and they aren't thinking about the artist rights because they don't have a roster. They also hadn't negotiated or left enough in the budget that was appropriate for our artists to do the campaign. So it was an easy way to say no. But it was also a conversation of like, hey, I'm super stoked that you got this project for yourself, but I would love for you to think about the, uh, artist rights in asking these, these questions, not just for the artist, but because we want to be able to create work with you, and if we allow someone to do machine learning on these images and then continue to uh, create derivative works and output, that's going to take less work away from the community. They're like, oh, okay. And for the most part we've been able to dig in and have a conversation about like, why, why does this crazy line exist within your contract. It really has to do with post production and been able to unravel it and, and move forward. So I feel blessed for that.

Speaker C: You guys, this has been so wonderful.

Speaker B: Thank you guys.

Speaker D: Thank you for having us, uh, and continuing the conversations. It's great.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker E: Ah, thank you so much. This was awesome.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker A: Thanks for joining us at the community table. Bringing this conversation to life with Kelly has been such a rewarding way to build on the original series. The more the industry evolves, the more. The more we believe in the power of open, honest dialogue to help us all navigate what's next. We hope today's discussion left you with fresh ideas, new perspectives, or simply a sense that you're part of a larger creative community that's figuring it out together. Be sure to subscribe, share the episode, and pull up a chair next time. There's always a seat waiting for you at the table.