FEATURE: Creativity needs technology and vice versa, say artists

A new generation of creators is learning to dance with the machine, one pixel at a time.

Major African festival, AVIJOZI, focused on the intersection of creativity and technology, highlighting the best of film production, animation, visual effects, and gaming.
AI technology should not replace artistry or creativity but should assist in shaping the future of African creatives and professionals.
Some artists are already using AI to finetune workflows and accelerate production.

As filmmakers, animators, and VFX artists gathered at AVIJOZI 2025, they weren’t just discussing new software, they grappled with a new creative partner: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Hosted on September 13 -14, in Hyde Park, digital art flickered across massive screens as the next great animated film was being dreamed up, a creative revolution underway. AVIJOZI wasn’t just another festival; it was a front-row seat to the future, where the line between creator and code is blurring.

VFX Specialist & Head of Innovation at Digital District, Nicolas Erba *Photo: Katlego Makhutle*

Nicolas Erba, the Head of Innovation at Paris-based Digital District, approaches technology with a pragmatic, forward-thinking mindset. Erba acknowledged the technical and conceptual challenges of integrating AI by noting that AI-generated images are often not “natively ready” for high-end production, citing issues with resolutions that are “too small for cinema” and difficulties with colour grading. He also pointed to a more abstract hurdle – AI introduces “completely new” concepts that are unfamiliar to many artists. His daily work involves overseeing tech monitoring, a process he described as scouting for and selecting new, production-ready AI technologies to “level up” the company’s existing pipeline.

Despite the complexities of AI in VFX work, he sees AI as a critical tool for automating repetitive tasks. Erba cites rotoscoping as a prime example, a manual tracing process that once took a human two days, can now be completed by AI in just ten minutes. The South African Cultural Observatory (SACO) reported that 68% of creative professionals surveyed were excited by the advent of AI. A similar percentage of 70% was already using AI tools in their daily work. Erba firmly believes that the future of the industry lies in a “hybrid workflow” that blends traditional techniques with AI, asserting that the true threat to artists is not AI itself, but rather other artists who embrace the technology to gain a competitive edge. “I don’t think that graphics artists are going to be replaced by the AI itself but some of them might be replaced by others using AI,” Erba said.

Afreetekture Founder & Senior Lecturer, Dr. Sechaba Maape
*Photo: Katlego Makhutle*

Senior lecturer at Wits University’s School of Architecture and Planning, Dr. Sechaba Maape, facilitated a workshop at AVIJOZI on demystifying AI and incorporating cultural intelligence. He believes this element is crucial for anyone using AI to create creative work about African people and places. Maape is an architect, urban designer, and founder of Afreetekture, a cultural consultancy that focuses on shifting the discipline of architecture and in the digital age. “Cultural intelligence is really for me about understanding the nuances of culture, how culture circulates, you know, like how culture frames meaning,” he said.

Maape challenged the simplistic, often stereotypical portrayals of Africa that persist online by developing AI models that explore the nuances of South Africa’s multicultural society. “We don’t have flies flying around our mouth. We are self-actualised,” Maape said.

Maape’s core concern is that if AI is trained on biased data, it will perpetuate stereotypes. “What I’m more worried about with AI than anything else, is that if you think about the pictures that have been taken that are supposed to be about Africa on the internet…I can bet you anything that it’s going to be a massive difference between those pictures and your day-to-day life,” he said. He said a person who only knows South Africa through online media might create a video game heavily focused on crime and fail to capture the everyday reality and cultural richness of places like Johannesburg. For Maape, cultural intelligence is about the human user’s ability to discern and understand the nuances of a culture, how it circulates, and how it frames meaning.

Lauren Fletcher, Audiovisual Project Manager at the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS), is focused on a similar and crucial facet of the AI discussion: empowering a new generation of creators. Her role involves fostering partnerships between French and South African professionals, such as the one between Erba’s Digital District and AVIJOZI partner and visual effects studio, Chocolate Tribe. Fletcher cautioned against the misconception that one can simply “chug in a few words and have a video come out”. Fletcher emphatically said: “If you’re not doing the work, the research, creating your own images to put into the different AI programmes, [then] you’re going to get really poor results.”

This belief is a core part of the Unrecorded Voices project, in which 12 South African digital artists used AI to create work with historical context: proving that research, authenticity, and creativity are what truly make a project impactful. Fletcher said that AI technology should be a layer built on a foundation of human creativity, not the other way around. Fletcher and her team are in the midst of a three-phase project that explores the impact of AI on the audiovisual sector, with the goal of creating connections and opportunities for local talent.

The festival brought together professionals in gaming, animation, film, and special effects to share insights, build capacity and bridge the gap between creativity and technology. The question is no longer “Will AI replace us?” but rather, “What can we create with it?” It is through the lens of cultural intelligence and artistic ingenuity that AI’s true potential can be unlocked, proving that its greatest purpose is to enhance and not diminish the human element of creative storytelling.