Sber has wrapped up its nationwide Giga-Art festival, an artificial intelligence creativity project that drew nearly 500,000 AI-generated images from participants across Russia. A jury selected 340 standout works, which are now featured on the festival's online platform and on large-format digital media facades in cities throughout the country.

The festival was built around a simple idea: people express their connection to their country in very different ways — through its landscapes, cultural heritage, literature, or the traditions of their hometowns — and AI could help bring those individual perspectives together.

Launched on Russia Day and running until National Unity Day, the initiative invited people from all over the country to explore their creativity using GigaChat, Sber's AI assistant. No artistic background or previous experience with AI tools was required. Participants drew inspiration from Russian folk art, nature, literature, and regional traditions, turning their ideas into digital artworks simply by describing them in words.

The response exceeded expectations, with participants creating almost 500,000 images over the course of the event — a volume that made the jury's 340 selections a highly curated slice of the output, and a tangible gauge of how far a format with no artistic or technical entry requirements could reach. The 340 selected entries were subsequently showcased on the festival's website and displayed on large-format digital screens in cities across Russia.

To mark National Unity Day, Sber also launched a nationwide digital campaign inspired by the festival, bringing selected artworks to public screens from November 2 to 6. With the festival itself now concluded, the campaign serves as the project's public-facing continuation, keeping the selected works in view after the submission window has closed. The campaign is part of the bank's 185th-anniversary program and carries the message: "United by AI Art. From Russia with Love."

Vladislav Kreynin, Senior Vice President and Director of the Marketing and Communications Department at Sberbank, said the project demonstrated how technology can help people share their personal perspectives and find common ground through creativity. He emphasized that every participant brought something unique to the collective image of Russia — whether memories of childhood books, the natural beauty of their home region, or stories associated with their city.

According to Kreynin, AI made artistic expression more accessible to people who might never otherwise have considered creating art themselves. The festival, he noted, showed how individual stories, brought together through technology, can form a shared picture of the country and strengthen the sense of connection between people across different regions and generations.

The Giga-Art initiative forms part of Sber's 185th-anniversary celebrations and highlights AI's potential as a tool for creative expression and social connection. For a bank marking 185 years, the project also functioned as a nationwide, hands-on showcase of its own AI assistant — one whose only entry requirement was an idea expressed in words.