This past summer, my class partner Marlana and I won the Cannes Future Lions Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France. We were floating on cloud nine as we walked across the stage to claim our awards.

The 2024 Future Lions competition was for Spotify. The brief asked, “How can Spotify spread positivity and bring listeners closer to the creators and communities they love?” It sought entries utilizing new technologies and uplifting underrepresented communities.

The Story

The Story

Through our research, we noticed that music streaming was not yet fully inclusive to the deaf community. We looked to change that. We drew inspiration from the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show where Rihanna headlined, but she wasn’t the only performer to leave a lasting impression.

Justina Miles, a deaf sign language performer, didn’t just translate Riri’s music—she embodied it. With electrifying energy, Miles created a whole new dimension to the performance.

She brought every lyric and note to life for fans, performing each word while dancing to RiRi’s beats. Her hands told the story, and her body caught the rhythm so precisely, it felt like she was channeling the core of Rihanna’s music.

Inspired by Justina Miles’ performance, Marlana and I came up with our solution for Spotify, titled “Break the Sound Barrier,” a digital AI idea that aims to make music streaming more inclusive to the deaf community by integrating deaf performances into the platform, ensuring music streaming is accessible to all users, regardless of their hearing ability.

By partnering with deaf performers like Miles and using deepfake technology, our AI idea “Break the Sound Barrier” can scale deaf performances into all the 300 plus sign languages for each song on the Spotify platform. This approach ensures that Spotify will be accessible to the deaf community.

The next part of our idea lets musicians choose to opt into “Break the Sound Barrier.” If a musician opts in, Spotify will generate them signing with deepfake tech. This will let musicians perform in all the world’s sign languages for the first time, bringing deaf fans closer to their favorite artists in a way that’s never been done before.

Jurors from Spotify chose our idea as the Grand Prix winner. One Spotify juror said, “This use of deepfake technology—genius. Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but everything that I’ve heard about deepfake technology absolutely terrifies me, right? To take that, and to turn it on its head to create something that puts positivity in the world was just wonderful. And that’s the whole point of Future Lions.”

Since our win, “Break the Sound Barrier” has garnered major press coverage in nearly two dozen major publications, including Ad Age, AdWeek, Campaign Brief, and The Wall Street Journal. The momentous Ad Age headline read, “Syracuse University Creatives Win Future Lions Grand Prix with Spotify Sign Language Project.

In the months following our big win, I had the chance to present our idea with Marlana at the Eric Mower Advertising Forum and solo at the 2024 Newhouse Impact Symposium—both incredible experiences that let me share what I’ve learned with an engaged audience.

I’m thrilled to see where the intersection of creativity, tech, and inclusivity takes us next. Next, I’m teaming up with Art Director Destiny Erazo as a working duo. Together, we’re looking for jobs starting this summer, focusing on creating work that moves the needle on inclusivity and creatively uses AI for social good.

The Award Show

The Award Show

The Festival

The Festival

The Press

The Press