Beyond the Hype: AI's Real Job at Your Event Isn't Efficiency. It's Intimacy.
- Richard Chalmers
- Nov 6
- 5 min read
There's a dangerous conversation happening in event strategy right now. It’s the seductive whisper of "efficiency."
We’re told generative AI is a silver bullet for cutting costs, automating customer service, and optimising logistics. For event strategists, marketing directors, and community leaders, this promise is tempting. But it's also a trap.
Your audience, especially tech-savvy, culture-obsessed Millennials and Gen Z, can smell a cost-cutting measure a mile away. They don’t want "efficiency." They want connection. They don’t want "automation." They want authenticity.
Using generative AI to simply do things faster or cheaper risks creating experiences that feel hollow, inauthentic, and lazy. Fans in the gaming, tech, and entertainment worlds call it "AI slop". The backlash is swift and brutal.
Look at Square Enix's Foamstars launch, which was savaged by players for its "lifeless and soulless" AI-generated art. Or Activision, which faced a fan revolt for using "AI slop" in its marketing. These weren't just angry tweets; they were missteps that eroded brand trust and directly impacted sales.
The thesis is simple: Generative AI's true value is not in replacing human effort. Its real power is in scaling deep, personal connections and building immersive worlds that were never before possible.
The Authenticity Paradox You Can't Ignore
To win, you first have to understand the paradox at the heart of your target audience.
Millennials and Gen Z are, by a huge margin, the biggest users of generative AI. Around 70% of Gen Z use it, and Millennials aged 35-44 are the most active "super users," with 62% reporting high expertise.
They happily use AI as a utility. They trust it for product research and recommendations. In fact, over 20% of both groups are starting to trust AI platforms more than people for curated advice.
But (and this is the crucial part) they are also the most anxious about it. 41% of Gen Z feel "anxious" about AI, and nearly half (49%) worry it will "harm their ability to think carefully".
They have drawn a very clear line in the sand. AI as a personal tool is good. AI as a substitute for human creativity and connection is a threat.
Your event strategy must fall on the right side of that line.
1. The Face of Connection: Scaling Intimacy with "Smart NPCs"
The biggest challenge for any major brand is scaling intimacy. Your intellectual property (IP) is your greatest asset, but a fan's ability to interact with it is painfully limited. At a convention, only one person can talk to a mascot at a time.
This is where AI changes the game. Instead of replacing a helpdesk, use AI to give your brand a face.
Gaming companies are already perfecting "Smart NPCs" (Non-Player Characters) that have unscripted, realistic, and dynamic conversations. Now, major brands are pulling this technology out of the screen and into the real world.
Disney is actively experimenting with AI to bring its "instantly recognizable Star Wars characters" to life, allowing them to have unique, in-person interactions with guests at its theme parks.
Arsenal FC launched "Robot Pires," an AI chatbot based on their club legend, Robert Pires. Fans can "talk" to the bot 24/7 to get stats and behind-the-scenes content, all delivered with the player's unique "wit and charm".
This isn't a chatbot. It's a scalable character. It transforms a one-to-many brand broadcast into millions of simultaneous one-to-one conversations. It taps directly into the proven, multi-billion-dollar market for AI companionship, allowing every single fan to have a personal moment with their hero.
2. The Personal Quest: From Curation to Creation
Right now, "personalisation" at most large-scale events means "curation." AI looks at an attendee's registration data and suggests a schedule, like at Salesforce's Dreamforce. This is useful, but it's not a story.
The true horizon is moving from personalisation-as-curation to personalisation-as-creation.
The technology for this already exists, forged in e-learning and game design. AI-driven training platforms can already create "complex, branching narratives" that adapt to a user's choices, making them the hero of their own story.
Now, imagine fusing this narrative engine with an event's data engine.
Virtual event platforms like 6Connex can already track an attendee's real-time behaviour (which booths they visit, what content they view, and who they chat with).
Let's combine them. An attendee, "Networking Nick", visits a sponsor's virtual booth. The event app doesn't just register this; it triggers a new "quest."
A push notification appears: "We see you met Brand X. An expert on their core tech is speaking in 10 minutes. Go there, then find the 'AI in Practice' demo to unlock your 'Mastery' badge and exclusive content."
You haven't just given Nick a recommendation. You've given him a unique story arc. You've gamified his journey and transformed him from a passive attendee into an active participant.
3. The 'Living Canvas': Solving Authenticity by Making the Fan the Artist
This is the most mature and powerful application of AI at events today. If fans reject AI art as inauthentic, the solution is simple: make the fan the artist.
The "AI-powered photo booth" is the prime example. Its value is not as a camera, but as a "creativity machine".
It doesn't just take a picture; it transforms the attendee.
At Coachella, an AI booth let fans "discover and transform their 'inner aura' into visually stunning generative art".
A Keebler Elves campaign used AI to let fans digitally "transform into Keebler Elves".
Intel used an AI-driven booth to create 3D visualisations and personalised stories, resulting in massive social media amplification.
The psychology here is perfect. The old photo booth put a logo in the corner. This new model transforms the fan into the brand's lore. The output is an artefact that is both deeply personal and inherently branded, making it authentic and infinitely shareable.
The pinnacle of this concept was the Mandarin Oriental's 60th-anniversary event. Guests were photographed on arrival. A custom AI system then sketched their portrait in a traditional calligraphic style. Finally, a robotic arm drew that sketch live onto a vast canvas in front of all the guests.
This is the perfect antidote to "AI slop." The brand didn't use AI as a cheap replacement for an artist. They made the AI a high-value spectacle. It was a performance that created "joy and delight," provoked conversation, and fostered genuine "brand warmth".
The Final Word: Measuring What Matters (Emotional ROI, or ROE)
This brings us to the business case. For decades, event leaders have been stuck measuring "vanity metrics" (attendance, social media likes, registrations). These numbers fail to capture the one thing that actually drives loyalty: emotional connection.
AI is not only the creator of these new intimate experiences; it's the only tool capable of measuring their impact.
Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI-powered sentiment analysis can scan thousands of social media posts, surveys, and forum comments to give you a real-time, quantitative score for attendee emotion. It can go deeper, using topic modelling to tell you why people felt a certain way. New tools can even create "emotional heatmaps" of a live crowd to show which parts of a presentation sparked joy or surprise.
This isn't a "soft" metric. It's the most valuable, predictive data you can have.
This is the closed loop. You use AI to create and scale intimacy, and you use AI to measure the resulting emotional connection. That connection is directly tied to revenue.
Research shows a strong correlation (r=0.68) between positive consumer sentiment (measured by AI) and increased purchase intentions.
Another 2025 study confirmed that AI-driven experiences directly influence purchase intention, with the model showing "substantial explanatory power".
Need proof? Ulta's loyalty programme uses AI for "context-aware engagement" and hyper-personalisation. The result? 95% of Ulta's total sales now come from its loyalty programme.
The debate is over. The true, defensible ROI of generative AI is not in cutting costs. It's in creating scalable, personal, and immersive experiences that build the kind of emotional loyalty that turns fans into fanatics.
Stop using AI to replace people. Start using it to make every single attendee feel like the only person in the room.
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