AI Media Award 2025: Six creative visionaries honored
Yoni Attlan, Yanina de Sapio, Mark Wachholz, Nishtha Shailajan, Jose Alvarez, and Dika Karan are shaping the new creative era with AI. The six winners of the first international AI Media Award 2025 were honored on Friday at the Smile Swiss Influence Award in Dübendorf.
With their innovative short films, they are setting new standards: their works impressively demonstrate how artificial intelligence enables new forms of creative storytelling, aesthetics and production - beyond classic tools and boundaries.
Over 300 entries from all over the world competed for the first international AI Media Award, a competition dedicated to the artistic use of AI. The 15-member jury honored six entries in the categories of animation, advertising, narration, art, fashion and music video and awarded the special "Best Swiss Entrie" prize to Yanina de Sapio.
The award sees itself as a stage for a new creative movement: Artists and creatives use AI not as a substitute, but as a partner to visualize ideas, model emotions and tell stories beyond previous boundaries.
"The award-winning works show that we are at the beginning of a new language - a language between man and machine," says co-initiator Andrea Riege, Founding Member of the AI Media Agency. "The AI Media Award aims to make this new departure visible."
A digital window into the future
The award-winning films are now available online at www.ai-media-award.com available. The award and the publication of the winning works opens a digital window into the next era of creative expression. An era in which technological innovation and human imagination go hand in hand.
The winners
Vienna-born Yoni Attlan won the AI Animation category with "At the Edge of the Night". The poetic and dark short film tells the story of a young woman caught between love, betrayal and survival and combines anime aesthetics with psychological depth. Attlan, originally from the advertising industry, uses AI to visualize emotional stories that previously only existed in sketchbooks.
Yanina de Sapio from Switzerland won in the AI Advertising category with Ocean Mirror, a fictional commercial about marine pollution. In vivid images, she shows how closely human civilization is intertwined with the marine ecosystem. The 25-year-old is studying Content Creation and Online Marketing at the SAE Institute Zurich and sees AI as a creative tool that opens up new production paths.
German filmmaker Mark Wachholz received the award in the AI Narration category for "The Cinema That Never Was". The film is a homage to all those works that were never realized - an essayistic play of ideas about the invisible history of cinema. Wachholz has been a screenwriter for over twenty years and sees AI as an instrument that makes hidden narrative spaces visible.
Indian artist Nishtha Shailajan was honored in the AI Art category for "Peach" - an experimental video work that uses the peach as a metaphor for the human body. The sensitive examination of control, desire and vulnerability reflects social power relations in an aesthetic condensation.
Jose Alvarez from the United Kingdom won the AI Fashion category with "The Fashion Icon Sending Shockwaves". The film shows the fictional fashion designer Lucien Verdeux III - half human, half reptile - as a symbol of artistic obsession and style consciousness. Alvarez, who found his way back to art via AI after an accident, combines precision craftsmanship with emotional depth.
The prize for AI Music Clip went to Dika Karan from Indonesia for "Echoes of Me". The visually haunting short film portrays a young woman who falls silent in the digital overload of her time. Karan, a self-taught artist with a penchant for emotional visuals, uses AI to condense loneliness, identity and hope into poetic images.
The interdisciplinary jury
The entries submitted were judged independently by an international jury of 15 members. Each juror assessed the works individually according to criteria such as creativity, technical implementation, originality and emotional impact.
In order to ensure objectivity and equal opportunities, the entries were evaluated anonymously - without details of the authors' names, gender, age or origin. This allowed all projects to be judged solely on their creative and artistic quality.
The jury was made up of 15 experts from the creative industries, media, technology and education. Julia Anklam (Fashion Stylist), Chris Beyeler (President, KImpact - Swiss Association for Artificial Intelligence), Roland Brack (Founder of brack.ch), Pasquale de Sapio (Founder & CEO at AMA AI Media Agency), Fabian Frauenfelder (CEO & Owner at Hangar Group GmbH), Thomas Frei (Director SAE Institute Switzerland), Cyrill Hauser (Managing Partner at Jung von Matt LIMMAT), Tobias M. Huber (Director of Operations, Storybook Studios), Nolan Michaels (YouTube AI Educator at FutureTechPilot), Fabian Plüss (CEO & Co-Founder at Swiss Influencer Award AG), Andrea Riege (AI Fashion Content Creator at AMA AI Media Agency), Björn Schaeffner (Journalist & Curator, ClubCultureCH), Barnaby Skinner (Deputy Editor-in-Chief at NZZ - Neue Zürcher Zeitung), Cihan Ünür (YouTube AI Educator at CyberJungle) and Caleb Ward (Co-Founder of Curious Refuge).
