Copyright Deadline
Hollywood may be moving at a somewhat glacial pace when it comes to establishing just how it will embrace AI in its industry, but when annual tech conference Web Summit kicked off its 10th edition in Lisbon on Monday night the energy felt anything but slow. Khaby Lame, the world’s most followed TikTok star, tennis champion Maria Sharapova and Anton Osika, the CEO of Swedish AI unicorn Loveable sat down in front of a packed stadium in Portugal’s capital city on Monday night where each weighed in on how the global tech industry is shaping their respective sectors. Lame, who has 161.1 million followers on TikTok, sat down with Visa’s Global Head of Production Mark Nelson to discuss how technology and new financial tools are helping reshape the business of creativity. The content creator stressed that “AI is not everything in this world,” which earned him a big round of applause from the tech crowd. “This is the moment for the creator to make original content because people love watching something that is not always AI, so it’s good for them to start to make something different and make something creative and original that people are going to enjoy,” he said, adding that he only uses AI or ChatGPT “occasionally” but never for producing his own content. Lame also hinted that he was “working on his own movie” at the moment but wouldn’t elaborate further. However, when pressed about what the future may look like for content creators, he said: “The future is bright for everybody. I think as long as you keep going with what you are doing, and as long as you keep loving what you are doing, you can get everywhere.” He continued: “Keep going and don’t get influenced by other people because the limits of other people are not your limits.” More than 70,000 attendees are set to participate at four-day event in Lisbon this week, with more than 2,500 startups joining the most impactful speakers and leaders in technology. Web Summit CEO and co-founder Paddy Cosgrave opened up the confab at the city’s MEO Arena on Monday night, emphasizing how “fast the world is changing today”. He said that when Web Summit first started in 2009 in Dublin before it moved to Lisbon in 2016 (the company also now operates events in Vancouver, Rio and Doha), that it was defined by a competition between Western tech companies and startups. But, he said, “this year, more than any year before, it’s clear that the era of Western tech dominance is fading.” Cosgrave told delegates that across the coming days, they would meet “the most advanced humanoid robots in the world and they are not European, they are not American – they are Chinese.” He predicted that China will “likely win the AI race” thanks to the country’s open source and free-to-use models. “This was utterly unimaginable just 12 months ago, but the world is changing so must faster than ever before.” He also highlighted Brazil’s real time, free payment system Pix as being on the cusp of revolutionizing the way world transfers money. “Just like Chinese AI models, Pix is entirely free,” Cosgrave said. “It’s so revolutionary that it has become the repeated target of President Trump in recent weeks and months.” But amid all the tech talk, culture and art continued to crop up in the two-hour opening night event. Lisbon’s mayor Carlos Moedas expressed ambitions to make Lisbon the “capital of innovation in Europe” and pointed to culture and art as being the “secret ingredients” in this ambition. “In a digital world, where everything is zero and one, the only thing that is different is our human nature through culture,” he said, also highlighting the recent second edition of Tribeca’s Festival Lisboa as being a badge of honor for the city. Sharapova, meanwhile, was joined by IBM Chief of Corporate Affairs & Brand Officer Sarah Meron where they discussed how AI is reshaping the $680 billion sports industry. In a wide-ranging discussion with TIME CEO Jessica Sibley, Sharapova noted that AI tools have been “incredibly impressive” when helping athletes understand “how the body performs and how it recovers.” “One of the reasons I love sports so much was that it really relied on instinct,” she said. “But what I’ve learned over the years is that the smarter you are as player, the better your instincts become. So, the more accurate data you have that you apply with repetition, the smarter you become and the better your instincts are…I was sceptical but I’m certainly warming up to [AI] because I’m actually seeing the benefits of it.” Osika wrapped up the opening night discussions by lifting the lid on his AI-powered platform Loveable, which became the fastest-growing tech startup in history this year after hitting $100M in annualized revenue just eight months after launch. Breaking down the idea that sparked the company, Osika said: “The idea was super simple. What if we could let anyone who has an idea be able to build software on that idea? Now there are 100,000 projects being created every day and what I’m spending my time thinking about is, ‘How do I talk to users to make sure that we are building the platform very rapidly. Web Summit Lisbon takes place November 10-13, 2025.
