Google

Showing the creative industry what AI can do in the hands of a storyteller.

Google brought me in to make a film using only its AI tools. Created with Johannes Leonardo for Small Business Week, The Small Brief gave three creative leaders, Susan Credle, Tiffany Rolfe, and me, unlimited access to Google Flow and a single assignment: champion a small business with studio-quality work in its own voice. Documentary cameras followed every step. Google’s goal was to show what its AI could do for storytelling, and to inspire other creatives and small business owners to try it for themselves.

Underneath sat a harder question for our industry. Many creatives still approach generative AI with real hesitation: technical, emotional, and moral. The project was never meant to settle that debate. It was meant to show what happens when years of craft meet a new tool with curiosity instead of fear.

The brief asked for a small business. ARCHANGELS is one, but the people it serves are an invisible workforce hiding in plain sight. Alexandra Drane founded it to make visible the 43% of American adults who are unpaid caregivers, most of whom don’t know that’s what they are. You don’t call yourself a caregiver. You show up for someone you love, and keep showing up, until it becomes the shape of your life. So the film couldn’t tell anyone who they were. It had to let them recognize it. I started by listening to Alexandra, her team, and caregivers themselves, and the film’s language came from those conversations.

The idea became Be My Mirror. The protagonist sees the reflections of everyone they care for before finally seeing themselves. Everything was built toward two words, See Yourself, held back for the final moment so the audience arrives at them rather than being handed them. I directed it scene by scene in Google Flow until the performances felt true. The iteration was the work, and the breakthrough came when I stopped fighting the unexpected and started following it. I also learned where AI stops. The voice, the edit, and the score came from people, because that is where the humanity had to live.

The film premiered at a Cannes Lions panel in June 2026 and launched in August across Google’s channels, alongside a docuseries on how all three films were made. For ARCHANGELS, it gave caregivers a moment of recognition and gave the organization a front door for everyone doing this work without a name for it. For the industry, it made a quiet case: the tool can push the craft further and faster, but human judgment still makes the final calls.