AI WEEK 2026: What We Brought (and What We Took Home)

May 26, 2026·Events·4 min read

There's something you don't expect when you bring an AI avatar to a trade fair with 30,000 people.

Media Engineering's stand at AI WEEK 2026 with the AI avatar Linda and immersive technologies

It's not the technology that stops people. It's curiosity. That genuine, slightly shy curiosity you see in the eyes of someone who approaches the stand without quite knowing what to expect, and then can't tear themselves away.

At AI WEEK 2026 we brought Linda, holograms, a robot and we took the stage four times. But what we really take home isn't in any of those numbers. It's in those conversations, the hundreds of "can I try?", "how does it work?", "and can I use it in my industry?" that filled two entire days.

The market no longer asks whether AI works. It asks how to use it. And that is an enormous difference.

What people saw in Linda

When someone started talking to Linda, the first reaction was always the same: a small hesitation. Then surprise. Then the real questions. A pharma manager wanted to train medical reps. An HR lead was thinking about onboarding. A retail entrepreneur pictured Linda in-store. Same technology, completely different visions.

That is the signal we were looking for: not "it's interesting", but "I want it for this".

Visitors interacting with the AI avatar Linda at the Media Engineering stand during AI WEEK 2026

On stage with Leonardo da Vinci

Antonio Franzese took the Main Stage with a talk that started from a provocative question: what if Leonardo da Vinci hadn't failed, but had simply arrived 530 years too early?

The answer was a journey through innovation, AI and the future of communication, with a special guest: our humanoid robot, which made its appearance in front of 2,500 people.

The effect was just right. Not "look how cool this technology is", but "look where we're heading, and we're already there". The difference between a demo and a vision.

Four stages in two days mean four different conversations, four types of audience. But one common thread: people no longer wanted to hear about potential. They wanted to know what we had already done, numbers, cases, results.

Antonio Franzese on the AI WEEK Main Stage during the talk on Leonardo da Vinci and artificial intelligence

AI agents are the present, not the future

"Agentic AI" was the word you heard everywhere. But the most interesting conversation wasn't about the power of the models, it was about context. An AI agent that doesn't know your company, your processes, your rules, is useless. With the right context it becomes something completely different: a collaborator.

This is exactly what we are working on: persistent memory, the ability to act in real workflows, integrated human supervision.

Those with built-in compliance have already won half the battle

From August 2, 2026, less than 70 days from now, the EU AI Act transparency obligations for avatars and chatbots come into force. Almost no one talked about it explicitly at AI WEEK. Yet the deadline is real.

A.N.N.A., the AI avatar developed with Alfasigma to train general practitioners, was born with native compliance from day one of the project. That is what allowed us to bring it to the SIMG congress in front of hundreds of doctors and to win the AboutPharma Digital Awards 2026 in the "AI for Communication, Education and Training" category.

When compliance is part of the project from the start, it stops being a cost. It becomes an advantage.

Banner of the AboutPharma Digital Awards 2026 won by Media Engineering's A.N.N.A. project for Alfasigma

Results matter more than demos

The most interesting stands at AI WEEK weren't the flashiest, they were the ones where someone had real numbers.

  • Training cost reduction of 50-90%.
  • Engagement 10-40% higher than traditional materials.
  • Pilot on 200 doctors with excellent KPIs.

We had those numbers. And it was the first AI WEEK where we felt people were genuinely looking for them.

The most important thing

Coming back from AI WEEK with clear ideas isn't a given. It takes time to separate what really matters from what was just noise.

What really matters, this year, we understood at the stand: people's curiosity has changed. It's no longer the curiosity of someone who wants to understand what AI is. It's the curiosity of someone who wants to understand what they can do with it, for their own company, their own industry, their own specific problem.

That curiosity tells us the market is ready. And we, after years of work on real cases, are ready to answer it.

If you want to understand where to start, concretely

Let's talk about your specific case

Tell us about your company and your goal: we'll show you how Linda, a hologram or an AI agent can work in your real-world context.

Contact us →
Media Engineering
Media Engineering
Accelera la trasformazione digitale.

Siamo una società italiana specializzata in comunicazione digitale innovativa: avatar AI, intelligenza artificiale applicata, olografia e formazione digitale per aziende che vogliono comunicare in modo memorabile ed efficace.

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