Page 122 - MINISTRY OF CULTURE PR REPORT - APRIL 2025

4/23/25, 2:11 PM Human imagination, not AI, will drive tomorrow's creative economy - Arabian Business: Latest News on the Middle East, Real Estat…
COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed content creation, consumption, and collaboration
online — forcing creatives to reimagine how they produce and distribute their work beyond

physical spaces. It was this accelerated digitisation that laid the groundwork for today’s AI
revolution. Artificial intelligence has since emerged — augmenting how ideas are

generated, refined, and shared. From design to storytelling, AI is accelerating the creative
process and unlocking new possibilities across every field.

For those unfamiliar with the sector, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) refers

to “the ideation, creation, production, distribution, and dissemination of goods and services

of creative expression and cultural preservation that generate and sustain social-economic
impact” (UAE Ministry of Culture, 2021). The fields within CCI are quite diverse, ranging

from advertising, music, fashion, and film, to architecture, performing arts, visual arts,
video games, and emerging technologies. The creative economy encompasses the wider

ecosystem of these industries as a whole, including the economic activities, value created,
and the policy frameworks to enable the sector.

Globally, the sector is worth over $2.25 trillion, employing 30 million people.

Meanwhile, the global digital creative economy is expected to note a compounding growth
of 11 per cent each year to reach a valuation of AED27 trillion by 2030, according to a

white paper by Dubai Design District (d3) and Dubai Media City.

In the UK, the creative industries contribute £111.7 billion in gross value added to the
economy, which is larger than the aerospace, automotive, life sciences and oil and gas

sectors combined. These numbers underscore a simple truth: creativity is no longer an

accessory to economic development — it is a driver of it.

AI reshaping creative economy

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the creative economy sector. The global market for
generative AI in creative industries is growing at an incredibly accelerated rate. Global

generative AI spending is expected to reach $644 billion in 2025, an increase of 76.4 per
cent from 2024, according to a forecast by Gartner, Inc. From generating hundreds of

concepts and content in seconds, to seeing an unprecedented level of knowledge available
at the click of a button, the use of generative AI is imperative in every creative field. In the

current evolving creative landscape, the most successful creatives will be those that learn
to incorporate AI within their practices, using it to elevate rather than replace their craft.

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