The Impact of AI on the Cultural and Creative Industries in Bavaria
Together with the Bavarian Association of the Cultural and Creative Industries, vbw and IW Consult, the Cultural Policy Lab has been working since 2025 on a pioneering study on AI in Bavaria's cultural and creative industries. The project combines economic analysis, sector expertise and transfer work in order to identify use cases, needs for action and concrete measures for AI adoption across the field.
The Challenge
Generative artificial intelligence is reshaping the cultural and creative industries at great depth. It affects not only individual subsectors, but very different professions and business models - from design, translation and dubbing to media production, software and digital services. The challenge was therefore not simply to observe technological developments, but to map a field in transition in a way that creates the capacity to act. What was needed was a stocktaking exercise that makes opportunities, risks, actual use cases and concrete support needs visible.
Our Approach
Our approach was to connect economic analysis with sector-specific and cultural policy expertise. Together with IW Consult and on behalf of vbw and BLVKK, we are working on a study that not only captures the current state of AI use, but also sharpens the concept of "smart creativity" - the question of how human creativity and technological systems will interact in the future. Our aim was to avoid treating the cultural and creative industries as a marginal case of AI transformation, and instead to recognise them as one of the fields where its effects appear particularly early and clearly. Methodologically, the project combines several layers: a company survey with more than 300 responses, expert interviews, the analysis of existing use cases, and transfer workshops with specialists from different areas. In addition, we looked at developments in comparison regions such as the United Kingdom, Canada and South Korea in order to understand which support and transformation approaches might be useful in Bavaria.
The Solution
The result is a pioneering study that systematically prepares the field of AI in Bavaria's cultural and creative industries. At its core are the actual forms of AI use, changes in working methods and business models, sector-specific differences, and the question of which infrastructural, legal and skills-related conditions must be created in order to shape this transformation productively. For the Cultural Policy Lab, the particular strength of the project lies in the combination of economic practice and deep cultural policy sector knowledge. In this way, a mere stocktaking exercise gradually became a space for action: based on the empirical findings, impact fields were identified and concrete measures were developed to strengthen AI adoption in the cultural and creative industries. These include ideas for skills development, experimentation spaces, networking structures and better framework conditions for creative work in the age of AI.
Impact & Transfer
This project is exemplary of how we work as the Cultural Policy Lab: entering structural transformation early, mapping it together with strong partners, and turning it into concrete options for action. An important moment was the presentation of first results at the vbw media congress in November 2025, where the study was embedded in a broader exchange between politics, business and the creative sector. There, Christian Steinau also discussed the strategic importance of the cultural and creative industries in the age of AI with Minister of State Dr. Wolfram Weimer. For us, this study is therefore more than a research project. It is part of a broader ambition to not merely observe cultural policy and the cultural economy in a phase of deep technological change, but to actively help shape them. This is where we see our role: developing new capacity to act together with partners and preparing the field early for one of the greatest upheavals in its history.