Nicholas Lising-White is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8. With a degree in human geography from UCL, he is interested in the impact of differing cultural conditions on human behaviour. Outside of work, he can be found meandering between cafes on his bike, testing his culinary skills, and intermittently pottering around a rugby pitch.

People are taking a patchwork approach to self-expression to feel like they have control over how their identity is generated. Yet as individual expression becomes more mutable and mistrust in social systems abounds, there’s one place above all that people are seeking integrity and guidance: brands.

Reality Split

United States

Technology

Apps and software

Beer and cider

Private Island’s use of Runway’s Gen 2 text-to-video generator to produce an AI US beer advert quickly went viral. Public sentiment towards AI is still mixed, but seeing absurd generative AI creations is one way of allaying any fears about it becoming too sophisticated, at least in the near term.