Showbiz Leaders Take AI Deep Dive at Variety Entertainment Summit at CES 2026

Launched in 1967, the Consumer Electronics Show bounced around cities and spots on the calendar before finally settling down in 1998 as an event held every January in Las Vegas. For more than half of those years, the Variety Entertainment Summit has been a fixture of that New Year’s tradition, bringing together leaders from various media verticals for onstage discussions about how bleeding-edge technologies are transforming entertainment and shaping the culture.

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This year, Variety’s CES offering comes in two parts, both held at C-Space Studio at the Aria: the Variety Entertainment Summit on Jan. 7 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and the Variety Business of Creators Summit, presented by Samsung Ads, on Jan. 8 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Participants will include everyone from Disney president of global advertising Rita Ferro and Hasbro president of licensing and entertainment Kim Boyd to actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Simon Helberg.

This year, there will be added urgency to the conversations brought on by the lightning-fast emergence of AI, which is viewed by many as an existential threat.

But Jon Liebman, chairman and CEO of Brillstein Entertainment Partners, points out that AI is just the latest in a long line of tech disruptors that were supposed to spell doom for the biz, from the arrival of sound movies in the 1920s to home video in the 1980s and the internet in the 1990s.

“I would say Hollywood has cried wolf a lot about technology destroying its business, and actually, the opposite has probably occurred,” says Liebman, who will appear on “The Future of Content” panel, moderated by Variety co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton on Jan. 7. “The technology, when harnessed appropriately, has become a tool for what we now have, which is global distribution of content. And so while I don’t think anyone really knows what it will do to our business, I think that the fear that we have has to be tempered by the reality of what technology has actually historically done for the entertainment business, which is fuel its growth in era after era.”

Liebman will get no argument from Jonathan Yunger, co-founder and CEO of AI-powered content production platform and studio Arcana, who will join actor-producer Breckin Meyer (who stars in Arcana’s AI short “Echo Hunter”) and Luminate chief analyst and president Andrew Wallenstein for a conversation on AI storytelling on Jan. 7.

“The [AI] toolset can really make a difference and help with being able to maintain or raise production value, but lower costs,” says Yunger, adding, “AI doesn’t work without the creative, without the storyteller.”

Other panels at the Variety Entertainment Summit on Jan. 7 include “The New Business of Entertainment,” moderated by Danny Ledger, telecom, media & entertainment leader for consulting services, Deloitte; “Experience This! What’s Next in Events Across Platforms” and “Fandom in the Zeitgeist,” moderated by Variety business editor Todd Spangler; “AI in Overdrive” and “The Big Picture Outlook — What Trends Will Shape 2026?” moderated by Littleton; and “Harnessing Fandom Through Live Sports Content Featuring Amazon Ads & WPP Media.” There will also be a “Brandmakers Elite Roundtable” and a headliner conversation with Anthony Wood, founder, chairman and CEO of Roku.

The Variety Business of Creators Summit on Jan. 8 will feature such panels as “The State of the Creator Economy in Media and Entertainment,” moderated Wallenstein; “New Hollywood Power Players: The Rise of Creators on TV” and “The Power of the Creator Brand,” moderated by Littleton; “The Live Shopping Era Has Arrived” and “Audiences Unlocked — The Future of Creator Marketing,” moderated by Spangler, as well as fireside chats with “media cartographer” Evan Shapiro and Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie.