Paulus unveils creator-owned AI platform Be.Ark on stage at Cannes Lions 2026
At Cannes Lions 2026, South Korean creative agency Paulus and AI platform company Re-Be.World unveiled Be.Ark, a creator-owned AI agent platform designed to give creatives ownership of the intelligence, knowledge and workflows they build over time.
The platform was introduced during a seminar titled Chaos to Kairos: The Age of Creator-owned Intelligence, hosted by Paulus Chief Creative Officer Thomas Hongtack Kim (above left). Paulus Creative Director Saffaan Qadir (above middle) and Studio K110 CEO and CCO Woori Nam (above right) joined the discussion.
With a Bronze Lion already won by Paulus, the seminar focused on what the speakers described as the next major question facing the creative industry: not whether AI will replace creators, but who owns the intelligence created through years of experience, judgement and collaboration.
Qadir argued that creative work has traditionally been “file-centric”, with research, briefs and presentations documenting outcomes but rarely capturing the thinking behind them.
“If intelligence is a living layer that evolves through interaction with the creator, then the real question becomes – who owns that intelligence?” he said.
Kim also questioned the current AI ecosystem, suggesting much of today’s technology is designed around centralised data collection.
“Today’s AI is built so that users’ information, ways of thinking, and decision-making are recorded by a handful of global AI companies and fed back into LLM training,” he said. “It is time to re-examine the direction of technological progress.”
Developed jointly by Paulus and Re-Be.World, Be.Ark allows creators to build AI agents whose memories and accumulated knowledge remain stored locally on the user’s own computer rather than in the cloud. The companies say the local-first approach also provides greater security for confidential client material protected by NDAs.
As a beta user of the platform, Woori Nam said: “As I kept talking and building interactions with Be.Ark’s AI agent, at some point it became another being that resembled my own way of thinking and judgment at work, and I loved that I had made it and owned it.”
Kim added: “Be.Ark’s philosophy is that an AI agent should evolve into another persona – one that holds each individual user’s taste, memory, and hard-won knowledge. That’s why every Be.Ark agent has its own face and name.”
Closing the session, the speakers encouraged creators to take ownership of the AI systems they develop rather than contributing their expertise to centralised models.
“This is a Kairos – a decisive moment, a window now open for creators,” said Kim. “Don’t hand over the creativity you’ve built over years; own your own intelligence.”
Be.Ark is available as a free download from Re-Be.World.
