As AI accelerates the pace of creative work, the central question is shifting — no longer “Will AI replace creators?” but “Whose asset do a creator’s accumulated judgment, taste, and ways of working become?”
Creative agency Paulus and AI agent platform company Re-Be.World held the seminar “Chaos to Kairos: The Age of Creator-owned Intelligence” on Thursday, June 25, at The Forum of Cannes Lions 2026, where they unveiled Be.Ark — an AI agent platform that creators own and cultivate themselves — for the first time. Paulus Chief Creative Officer Thomas Hongtack Kim hosted, with Paulus Creative Director Saffaan Qadir and Woori Nam, CEO and CCO of Studio K110, joining as panelists.
AI replacing creators? The real question is ‘who owns that intelligence‘
Saffaan Qadir noted that for decades, creative work has stayed “file”-centric. Research, briefs, and proposals all survive as files, but a file only shows what was decided — not why that conclusion was reached, or how feedback reshaped a judgment. Describing the AI-era shift as a “move from files to intelligence,” he stressed: “If intelligence is a living layer that evolves through interaction with the creator, then the real question becomes — who owns that intelligence?”
Thomas Hongtack Kim pointed to the structural problem of big-tech-centered AI. “Today’s AI is built so that users’ information, ways of thinking, and decision-making are recorded by a handful of global AI companies and fed back into LLM training — a mechanism in which each individual’s knowledge ends up fueling the growth of a very few companies,” he said, adding that it is time to re-examine the direction of technological progress.
Be.Ark: a creator-owned, local-first AI agent
The free, open software Paulus and Re-Be.World offer as their answer is Be.Ark. Saffaan explained, “Each agent has short-, mid-, and long-term memory, like the human brain — and the key is that all of that data is stored on the user’s own PC,” adding, “Even if you switch the LLM or the service, the memory and character of the agent you’ve grown through interaction stay yours.” Because most client materials in the advertising and creative industry are confidential information bound by NDAs, Be.Ark — running on a local LLM — gives creators an environment where they can work with real peace of mind on security.
Woori, who is also a Be.Ark beta user, shared his experience: “As I kept talking and building interactions with Be.Ark’s AI agent, at some point it became another being that resembled my own way of thinking and judgment at work — and I loved that I had made it and owned it.” Thomas Hongtack Kim added, “Be.Ark’s philosophy is that an AI agent should evolve into another persona — one that holds each individual user’s taste, memory, and hard-won knowledge,” noting, “That’s why every Be.Ark agent has its own face and name.”
A decisive moment for creators — ‘Own your intelligence’
Woori urged creators to act: “Instead of contributing to a superintelligence that will replace human creativity, let’s build agents we own.”
Saffaan said, “If the learning a creator has built over decades is absorbed into the model of a transnational AI company and enriches its shareholders, that isn’t progress for the creative industry — it’s extraction.”
Thomas closed the session: “This is a Kairos — a decisive moment, a window now open for creators,” adding, “Don’t hand over the creativity you’ve built over years; own your own intelligence.”
After the seminar, a former Google developer responded positively: “Resistance to AI in the creative industry is so strong that it’s a hard moment — thank you for offering an alternative perspective on how AI and people can coexist.”
The Be.Ark AI agent is currently available for free download at the Re-Be.World official site (re-be.world).
