Luke F. Walton

2:00 p.m.–2:45 p.m. PT — Wednesday, February 24, 2027

Panel: What Humans Own Now: Taste, Judgment and Creative Direction in an AI-Executed Org

AI can now generate a hundred campaign concepts before lunch, write the copy, produce the visuals, and help bring it all to market. As execution becomes faster, cheaper, and more accessible, the real competitive advantage shifts to judgment: deciding what deserves to exist, what gets cut, and which ideas are worth investing in. And as more brands adopt the same AI tools, the risk of producing the same messages, visuals, and creative approaches grows. Human taste, business context, and creative direction become more valuable than ever.

Moderated by Adam Constantine of ACE Creatives, this panel brings together marketing leaders from Getty Images, Amazon, and LinkedIn to explore what humans must continue to own as AI takes on more of the execution. They'll discuss where human judgment creates the greatest competitive advantage, how to maintain originality and authenticity in an increasingly AI-generated world, and how to establish the standards and accountability needed to scale AI responsibly.

You'll leave with a clearer understanding of where human expertise delivers the greatest value, what to delegate to AI, and how to build a marketing organization where technology scales execution without sacrificing creative differentiation.

Key Takeaways:

• Shift your team's creative value from production to selection, focusing on the ideas, directions, and investments that deserve to move forward.
• Lead with audience needs and business objectives, rather than adopting AI simply because the technology is available.
• Bring the business context, creative judgment, and brand understanding AI can't replicate to keep your messaging and positioning distinct.
• Invest in original creative assets, from real people and locations to authentic brand experiences, then use AI to extend their value and reach.
• Redefine human oversight by establishing clear objectives, guardrails, and accountability so AI can execute at scale without compromising authenticity, IP, representation, or brand safety.

10:00 a.m.–10:45 a.m. PT — Thursday, February 25, 2027

Case Study: Agentic GTM in Practice: From Copilots to Delegated Workflows

Agentic AI becomes useful when it stops being a chat interface and starts completing real work. Giving a model tools is the easy part. The harder questions are operational: What should an agent actually own? Which steps should remain deterministic? Where does model judgment belong? What boundaries should be enforced in code rather than left to a prompt? When should a human intervene? And how do you know whether delegation is producing better business outcomes rather than simply more output?

Drawing on his experience operating AI inside Amazon and building production AI systems and software at Surmado, Luke F. Walton will break down a practical model for moving go-to-market work from AI assistance toward supervised and delegated execution. He will ground the framework in real operating patterns from global paid media and from Surmado, where an AI agent is entrusted to operate and change customer-facing production websites. The session will show how to decompose work, separate deterministic logic from model judgment, set permissions and escalation paths, enforce critical boundaries structurally, preserve reversibility and human oversight, and evaluate whether the resulting system is actually worth delegating to.

Key Takeaways

• Learn how to break a GTM workflow into deterministic steps, model judgment, and human decisions
• Examine what changes when an AI system is trusted to operate a customer-facing production asset instead of just recommending actions
• Determine when to enforce a boundary in code, architecture, permissions, or CI rather than relying on prompt instructions
• Calibrate the right level of AI autonomy based on stakes, reversibility, observability, and escalation paths