SXSW is where bold ideas in storytelling, technology, art, advertising, health, and more collide to spark what comes next. This year signaled a new era for storytellers, redefining not just what stories are told, but how audiences engage with them.
Characters are entering our physical world
SXSW is where you can have interesting conversations with creative thinkers, robots, and holograms. This year, characters started to enter the real world. Sweet!’s AI-driven candy store let audiences interact with a hologram character to discuss issues related to our shared world. Enchanted Tools’ robot, Mirokaï, left her animated origin world to visit Austin and spark inspiration for storytellers to bring characters into audiences’ worlds in new ways.
The panel Artificial Presences: AI, XR, and Humanoid Robots featuring Mirokaï, Rachel Joy Victor (Co- Founder or FBRC.ai), Jérôme Monceaux (CEO of Enchanted Tools), Joanna Popper (Founder, Laurel Beach) and Fred Volhuer (CEO, ATLAS V), highlighted the value of inviting characters to impact our real-life stories. The goal, shared Monceaux, is not to create robots that are like an artificial human. Characters can make life more whimsical where questions can lead to adventures.
Robotics can become a new medium for audiences to interact with story worlds, and storytellers can also help shape how the robots entering our world elevate our lives. The AI- based models that “bring life” to the robots can be used interchangeably which means there can also be consistency in character between non-player characters (NPCs) in games, through to robot form.
As characters in robot form enter our world, this also unlocks new ways for them to learn. A multimodal robot can learn from the world around it by processing speech, visuals, and movement, allowing storytellers to gather dynamic data that can shape its interactive features and even inspire new storylines for the IP.
Seek Chaos and Pattern-Break
The most compelling aspect of SXSW is how it brings together thought-leaders, ideas, and experiences that are both innovative in their own field and have the potential to inspire change in others. Blake Kammerdiener, SXSW’s Senior Manager of Film & TV, and XR Programming, explains that the mentality of being open and receptive to new ways of thinking is “within the nature of SXSW” that drives audiences to it each year. It is therefore valuable to veer off course to discover insights that may shift perspective or spark ideas that can break the pattern of same and evolve unrelated industries.
The panel on this very topic called “Harnessing The Power of Complexity, Imagination and Design,” featuring Neil Theise (NYU Grossman School of Medicine), Cassandra Vieten (University of California, San Diego) and Tracy Deluca (How Might We Design), explored the value of complex systems such as cells through to economies, moving from order to disorder. We can say for sure that the entertainment ecosystem is currently in a state of disorder-driven by significant shifts in how audiences consume entertainment, and advances in technologies.
“There’s a utility for disruption…but too much breaks the system” shared Theise in a follow-up discussion. “It’s about cultivating a set of conditions out of which creativity can emerge.” Not allowing this can create destruction, also making it easier for competition to benefit.
Easier said than done? One way to pattern-break is with collaborations. Collaborations between other story IP, and even ethically trained AI, can help to create breakthrough audience experiences. The Video Games and the Crossover With Entertainment IP’s panel featuring Tyler Bahl (CMO – Activision Publishing), Libby Bush (Global Head, M&E Partnerships – CAA), and Dion Rogers (Art Director, Overwatch 2 at Blizzard Entertainment) spoke about identifying story collaborators by finding where themes and values overlap.
Consider collaborations that can have a cultural impact based on the outcome of the worlds crossing over, and content that it can launch for each individual story world or brand. The most beneficial collaborations can spark long-term changes for IP, not just superficial promotions for a single piece of content.
Audience Vulnerability Can Advance Story Experiences
When curating the XR experiences for SXSW, Kammerdiener is “always looking for [content that creates] emotional connection or emotional response.” Some of the most buzzed-about experiences among innovators at the Conference & Festival were those that required audience members to be open with their hopes, and even vulnerable enough to share their grief. There were even sessions on traditionally challenging topics such as the panel “Grieving Out Loud: How Media is Revolutionizing Our Grief.”
Story experiences that integrated audience sentiment leveraged the most conducive tools. Ancestors brought people together for a shared mobile adventure where they collaborated with each other and AI to shape a positive story for them and their future family, generations later. Traces: The Grief Processor used VR to guide visitors through a personal loss. The project’s Director, Vali Fugulin, shares that “using VR as a tool was a great way to spark a conversation around grief.”
This experience pushes boundaries because it asks you to come into the experience with your own grief…you can interact and set your grief in motion…It’s a symbolic experience and being together in this virtual world allows you to do things that you could never do. It makes grief visible, and you can transform inside the VR world.”
“People around the world are craving emotional connection and responses,” said Kammerdiener. While mass audiences may not be ready to be as vulnerable in public spaces as SXSW attendees often are, this is something that audiences may already be open to for their at- home entertainment. This can come to life in immersive experiences, through story-based interactions with AI-powered characters. It is also very much in line with the rising interest in personalized experiences.
Technology is not the hero
There was more excitement around stories and solutions than technology itself this year. As futurist Amy Webb explained in her SXSW launch of the 2025 Emerging Tech Trend Report, we have now crossed over to what she calls “The Beyond” where the technologies we saw coming are now here and actively changing our civilization “in ways we can’t explain.”
This year, instead of deep discussions about hardware and software features for the latest spatial headsets or AI tools, the spotlight was on storytelling and which tools creators can now choose to help their workflows and to give the audience the experience most suitable to the story purpose. With more technologies in market, there is more opportunity for story-medium fit.
Audiences were compelled to visit Linh’s story in Currents, more so than to experience the advanced technology of the Apple Vision Pro that it was created exclusively for. And, the eye-tracking in Face Jumping was more a seamless way to give audiences new powers, while experiencing the joy of swapping perspectives by becoming other characters and objects in a light-hearted narrative.
Disney has been leading the way in leveraging new technologies to help audiences explore story worlds in new ways. Now that incredible technologies are more accessible to creators with virtually all levels of budget, it is no surprise that there was increased attendee interest in how to approach innovative story experiences. In “The Future of World-Building at Disney” session featuring Alan Bergman (Co-Chairman, Disney Entertainment) and Josh D’Amaro (Chairman, Disney Experiences), they reinforced that the story doesn’t end at the credits.
New tools can help creators to tell stories in more compelling ways, and even turn the worlds into real places where audience members join characters—both human and robot-powered. By leveraging Unreal Engine for everything from previs to games, there are already developed assets that can be used across mediums when a strong story world is compelling enough for more audience touchpoints.
SXSW made it clear—this is a defining moment for storytellers. Characters are entering our world, creators can lean into the disruption taking place engaging audiences in new ways, and audiences are more open than ever to deeper, more personal story experiences. Exciting new tools and mediums are here, but it’s the story experiences that will shape the direction for what’s next.
Laura Mingail is the founder of Archetypes & Effects, SXSW Advisory Board member, speaker, and author.
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