It may have been all smiles at Cannes, but behind closed doors the future of AI poses a huge threat to ad agencies, writes Paul Armstrong

Cannes wrapped last week with sun, celebration and (Meta) spectacles. Brands congratulated themselves on big ideas, bold storytelling, some disgraceful headlines and culture-first thinking. Behind the scenes, platforms continued methodically reshaping customer access and removing marketers from the equation while leaving them with the bill.

Google’s clampdown on robocalls has been positioned as an anti-spam measure. But functionally, it is an elegant removal of human sales from customer journeys. Google Assistant can now wait on hold, transcribe calls and complete basic service interactions without requiring direct brand contact. Customers are learning that they never need to speak to a business again, and that should terrify a lot of businesses, not just sales teams. Your customer relationship doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to Google.

Meta is also shifting. Zuck and co have publicly committed to automating the ad generation process by 2026. Not just creative assets but audience targeting and media buying, too. No strategic brief, no agency, just objectives and inputs. The Cannes crowd will undoubtedly argue the output will be trash, but most consumers would argue a lot of ads made today weren’t made by humans with any sense of a grip on reality. Profit grows when human ‘variables’ get removed from the system. Meta is not interested in creative........

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