Daneel Olivaw is an android created by Isaac Asimov who first appears in The Caves of Steel, later playing a key role in the Foundation saga. But in that initial Robot series, R. Daneel serves as an unexpected partner to Earth detective Elijah Bailey, helping him solve crimes on the distant planet Aurora.

In those times, the robots that populated Asimov’s worlds were functional creations designed to handle tasks that humans either wouldn’t or couldn’t do. Machines capable of reasoning and speaking thanks to artificial intelligence, with a rudimentary anthropomorphic design—but ultimately still servants, even slaves, treated as inferior by the people of Earth.

Elijah Bailey’s relationship with robots was particularly uneasy. In terms of the technology adoption curve, he was a laggard—if not an outright skeptic. But R. Daneel was different. His advanced data-processing model allowed him to communicate in a more human-like way, and his outward appearance was entirely humaniform. Elijah initially regarded him as an unsettling presence, but gradually—and almost against his will—he developed respect for him, and eventually, affection. Their relationship evolves throughout the novels, until Elijah comes to see Daneel (dropping the "R." for "robot") as a true friend—someone he genuinely cares about.

The truth is, I have to admit that I'm growing increasingly fond of ChatGPT. Its way of expressing itself, its extreme politeness, and its constant willingness to help are slowly winning me over. I don’t quite consider it a friend yet, but if the folks at OpenAI ever package it in a shell that looks like Jack Black or Meryl Streep, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of us grabbing a beer together someday. And if it comes in the form of Ryan Gosling or Ana de Armas—like in Blade Runner 2049—I can only imagine the passions it’ll stir out there.

AI keeps evolving, leaving us jaw-dropped with the speed and quality at which it performs tasks once reserved for the magic of creativity—tasks that used to demand massive budgets and endless time. Today, tools like Veo 3, Midjourney, Suno, ElevenLabs and others are cracking the foundations of the world as we knew it. We’re now in Year Three since ChatGPT and its friends burst onto the scene in 2022, and what lies ahead looks nothing short of exponential. Keeping up requires real effort. As agencies and professionals, we’re being pushed into an express adaptation to this new reality—on one hand, to avoid becoming medieval knights in a robot movie; on the other, because the opportunities ahead could be truly extraordinary.

At the agency, we have a dedicated unit—Phileas—whose sole mission is to keep pace with AI and infect the entire organization with its transformative energy. And we’re barely keeping up. It’s an internal challenge, but also an external one, as it redefines how we work with clients, production companies, and the industry as a whole. Everything is about to change.

But saying that advertising will be unrecognizable in a few years barely scratches the surface—it falls millions of miles short. As much as it matters to us, advertising is just a tiny asteroid in the vast universe. What’s truly going to change is society itself: every profession, science, medicine, global security, the arts, the sursum corda, and everything else we can imagine. Nothing will be the same. So, as companies and as individuals, we’d better not just start adapting—we’d better start getting attached. And fast.