If 2023 was the year everyone dropped their jaws, and 2024 was the year we drowned in new tools, then 2025 became the year when the dust finally began to settle.
As AI Lead at Liwlig, I have seen this shift up close. We have moved from “trying everything” to actually demanding results and measurability.
It has been a year of sobriety. And it was necessary.
From playground to infrastructure
Just a year ago, much of the focus was on experimentation and volume. We, like many other companies, tested a wide range of specialist tools and were impressed by one shot prompts that seemed to achieve an extraordinary amount in a very short time. But this year, something changed. Organizations began to realize that a generative AI that merely “guesses well” is not enough for business critical processes.
We have moved away from the probabilistic, where the answer changes every time, toward demands for determinism. You need measurable value and guaranteed outcomes, not just impressive tech demos. The challenge now is to build platforms that tame generative power so that the results are correct, relevant, and reliable. Every time. The playing is over. The tools now have to deliver real business value. The entire AI bubble is beginning to crack because of this fairly fundamental requirement. Development is moving at a furious pace and the arms race between tools is in full swing, but we have found a way forward that helps us avoid ending up in a paralysis of indecision.
The naïveté around data is gone
The second major shift concerns security. The honeymoon phase, where little thought was given to what kind of data ended up in black boxes on servers in the US or Asia, is definitively over. With the EU AI Act and a sharper focus on AI security, the industry has woken up.
At Liwlig, we have seen data sovereignty move from being a “boring compliance issue” to becoming a decisive competitive advantage. Knowing where your data lives and how it is protected is no longer optional. It is a basic requirement just to be allowed to participate at all. We must protect our own data and our clients’ data with the same care as we protect our bank accounts. Being able to answer these questions with a clear AI strategy is incredibly valuable.
AI as a tool for a sustainable working life
But technology is not only about security and numbers. It is about the people doing the work. The event industry unfortunately struggles with challenges related to mental health, often linked to the stress of managing enormous amounts of information, administration, and logistics under intense pressure. At Liwlig, we work hard on sustainability across all three dimensions: environmental, economic, and social. But we, like everyone else, are not perfect. Not yet.
Here, I see what may be the most important, and perhaps the least discussed, benefit of AI. By streamlining and simplifying administrative processes, we can retain control while making work more sustainable over time. AI becomes a form of relief that allows employees to breathe and focus, instead of drowning in data handling. This is as much about working conditions and oversight as it is about efficiency. We see it as a given that we remain involved in and in control of all administrative steps and outputs. But when it comes to collection, organization, and packaging, these are areas where AI can provide significant support.
Our value is not measured in time
This leads us to an insight that may be uncomfortable, but is necessary. As AI becomes part of everyday work, we must rethink how we define work itself. There is still a widespread sense of “AI shame,” where using these tools is seen as cheating, especially in creative industries, as if the value of a delivery somehow decreases because it took less time to produce.
We must stop measuring human value by how many hours something takes. It is an outdated metric that these tools now force us to challenge. The real value lies not in time spent, but in the effect for the client and the recipient, in the quality and reliability of the delivery, and of course in the overall creative level.
A weak prompt or brief will still produce a weak result. But in the hands of an expert who no longer has to spend time on administration and can instead focus on vision, the outcome becomes stronger than ever. It is time we stop being ashamed of the tools and instead take pride in what we, and our time, are now able to accomplish.
// Linus Nylund AI Lead & Art Director Liwlig Sweden
And yes. Both the text and the image were created together with AI.
