Havas unveils global AI portal as agencies race to standardize generative tools

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Havas on Tuesday unveiled plans for AVA, a global artificial intelligence portal designed to give its employees and clients secure access to some of the world’s most advanced large language models, as advertising groups race to integrate generative AI into their core operations.

Set to begin rolling out this spring, AVA is intended to function as a centralized gateway connecting Havas teams worldwide to leading AI systems, including OpenAI’s GPT-5, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5, and Google’s Gemini 3. The company said the platform would help employees move more quickly from creative brief to execution, while maintaining compliance standards required by global clients.

Havas said the system builds on its long-running “Village” model, which organizes creative, media, data, and technology teams under a single operational structure in major markets. Executives described AVA as an extension of that approach, designed to standardize how artificial intelligence is used across the group while keeping creative decision-making in human hands.

The initiative also reflects the company’s broader investment in Converged.AI, a groupwide framework introduced in 2024 to align data, tools, and capabilities across markets. Havas has committed nearly €1 billion to the effort, including about €600 million invested over the past decade and an additional €400 million earmarked through 2027, as agencies seek to modernize their technology stacks amid growing pressure from consulting firms, platforms, and in-house brand teams.

The announcement coincided with a CES keynote appearance by Yannick Bolloré, Havas’s chairman and chief executive, alongside former Procter & Gamble chief marketing officer Jim Stengel. Speaking to an audience of senior marketing and technology executives, Bolloré framed generative AI as an organizational shift rather than a simple productivity tool, arguing that its value lies in augmenting human judgment, creativity, and cultural understanding, not replacing them.

As part of that effort, Havas said it plans to train and certify employees across its global network in the responsible use of AI, making literacy in the technology a requirement rather than a specialization.

“Technology should amplify human creativity, not substitute for it,” Bolloré said, adding that AVA was designed to bring multiple AI models into a single, secure environment so teams could choose the right tools for different tasks without exposing client data or intellectual property.

At CES, Havas has expanded its on-site presence at the ARIA resort, hosting clients and partners and participating in mainstage programming. The company said it was the only advertising agency with a dedicated space within the conference’s Storyteller environment, underscoring its ambition to position itself at the intersection of creativity, media, and technology.

The group is also using the conference to demonstrate applied uses of artificial intelligence in areas such as research, health, and creative production. These include a recently announced partnership with the AI firm Akkio to develop agent-based capabilities within Converged.AI, as well as its Vermeer platform, which combines generative AI with human oversight to produce brand-safe creative work at scale. Havas has also pointed to its investment in Vurvey, an AI-driven research company that blends real and synthetic data while addressing regulatory and privacy concerns.