Apple has been releasing one brilliant marketing film after another, all bound by a single, telling thread — none of them involve artificial intelligence in the filmmaking process. Over 15 years, CEO Tim Cook engineered Apple’s rise from a Silicon Valley favourite worth $350 billion into a cash-generating giant worth $4 trillion. Yet despite the obvious cost savings AI might offer, Apple remains firm in its belief that true creativity belongs to humans.

Consider the marketing film for this year’s smash hit, the MacBook Neo. Cook declared on X/Twitter that “Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers.” Going by reviews — including ours — the machine has clearly struck a chord, with shipping estimates for various colours and configurations worth keeping a close eye on.

A behind-the-scenes YouTube Short offers a glimpse into how the video was made. Apple itself described it as “a peek at some handmade magic” — and rightly so. Rather than rendering everything on a MacBook Pro, the Cupertino team went decidedly old-fashioned, relying on handcrafted materials, LED strip lights, tiny confetti cannons, and clever shooting techniques. CGI does make an appearance, but it plays a supporting role to a wealth of real-world craft.

And that, increasingly, is a radical act. While the rest of the industry has rushed headlong into AI-generated campaigns — soulless, frictionless, and cheap — Apple has quietly held its ground. You will not find the word “AI” in its marketing.

Instead, Apple speaks of “personal intelligence”, “on-device” capability, “privacy”, and “performance.” The hardware may power the world’s best AI models, but who decides what gets made? The customer. The creative. Never the machine.

This philosophy runs deeper than a single campaign. Last December, Apple released A Critter Carol, an advertisement featuring woodland puppets celebrating in a wintry forest.

Every element — the puppets, the sets, the typography — was brought to life through practical effects. Directed by Mark Molloy, produced by TBWAMedia Arts Lab (Apple’s long-standing bespoke agency), and shot on an iPhone 17 Pro, it was a deliberate and warm counterpoint to the AI-generated holiday content proliferating elsewhere — most notably Coca-Cola’s much-criticised seasonal advertisements.

Each animal in A Critter Carol was handbuilt by a dedicated team of artists, with careful attention paid to giving every creature a convincingly “lived-in” look. Nothing was left to an algorithm.

The same spirit carried over into the rebrand of Apple TV+ to Apple TV. Every shimmer in the new logo was crafted by hand — no CGI whatsoever. The music was composed by Oscar-winner Finneas. The typeface was developed in close collaboration with Apple’s own design team. The Apple logo and “tv” lettering were cut from large pieces of glass and mounted in a studio. The sense of movement viewers perceive on screen is not the logo shifting — it is the camera. The play of colours across the glass surface was achieved by a person physically moving the lights.

When Apple marked its 50th anniversary earlier this month, this human-centred vision was woven through every message. Company representatives returned to it again and again: people will remain at the heart of everything Apple does for the next 50 years.

Even Cook’s recent letter to the community — written as he prepares to transition from the CEO role — carried the same sentiment: “Thank you, most of all, for believing in me to lead the company that has always put you at the centre of our work. Every day we get up and think about what we can do to make your life a little bit better.”

Tor Myhren, Apple’s vice-president of marketing communications, gave perhaps the clearest articulation of this position at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025. “Creativity is changing fast,” he said. “Machines are working, and algorithms are making decisions for us because they are highly logical. But logic isn’t the best way to connect with the consumer. Consumers have to feel something, and people are better at doing that than machines.”

Myhren was careful not to dismiss AI outright. He called it “mindblowing, revolutionary, and the most exciting tool we have seen in our lifetime.” But exciting, in Apple’s view, does not mean sufficient — and it certainly does not mean human creativity is no longer needed.