Digital Hollywood: The AI & Entertainment Summit
Tuesday, July 21st, 2026
3– 3:50 PM Eastern Time Zone
Session I: A Virtual Event
AI and Next-Level Storytelling: Creativity Beyond the Algorithm - AI-XR-Experimental
The most adventurous creative minds in Hollywood have never been satisfied with the algorithm — and artificial intelligence, at its most experimental, is giving them tools to go further than any technology before it. This session lives at the intersection of AI, extended reality and pure creative experimentation — where the story is not just told but experienced, where the boundary between narrative and immersion dissolves and where the filmmaker, the artist and the technologist become indistinguishable from each other. These are not polished case studies or carefully managed presentations. This is the creative frontier — raw, experimental and genuinely unpredictable. In this roundtable we bring together the storytellers who are pushing AI and XR into territory no algorithm could have mapped and no studio executive could have greenlit alone.
Speakers:
Evo Heyning, CEO, Realitycraft
Johannes Saam, CTO and Co-Founder of SEED Studio AI, former, Framestore
Nic Hill, co-founder, Sawhorse
Xiaobi Iris Pan, Lead Product Designer, Amazon
Lori H. Schwartz,
Founder & CEO, StoryTech, Moderator
Diana Colella is executive vice president of Autodesk’s Entertainment & Media vertical solutions group. In this role, she manages product, strategy and execution for the company’s portfolio servicing the film, TV and games industries. Colella has been with Autodesk for more than 20 years occupying a range of leadership roles, including head of product management and worldwide support. She has extensive experience in strategically transforming business models, creating new product offerings and optimizing processes on a global scale. Most recently, she served as vice president in Autodesk’s Business Strategy and Marketing group, leading the M&E and AutoCAD businesses, which represent more than $1B in annual recurring revenue. In this role, she drove the company’s strategy for digital conversion of non-compliant users and launched One AutoCAD. She is the executive sponsor of the Autodesk Women’s Network.
