Luma AI — “Luma Taxi”

THE LAST RIDE OF THE WILD WEST

I live in Scottsdale, right where the city runs out and the desert takes over. Saguaros, mountains, dust, heat that bends the air. It still looks like the Old West.

And it’s full of robots.

Phoenix was the pilot city for Waymo, so every day I watch driverless cars glide past cactus and canyon like it’s the most normal thing in the world. No one behind the wheel. Just a spinning sensor on the roof and a cowboy landscape all around it.

It set my mind on fire. Two eras sharing the same road. I had to do something with that contrast.

Luma Taxi became my answer: the frontier and the future, dancing together.

It was also my first time using Luma, and I made it as a one-man studio. Concept, writing, visual development, generation, inserts, editing. I scored it myself in Suno. There was no crew and no agency, so every decision was mine, and so was every mistake.

The generating was the fast part. The real work was the three weeks after, watching it over and over and making small adjustments. A trim here, an insert there, a beat of music nudged half a second. AI makes the images. You still have to find the film.

Luma Taxi won Luma AI’s Dream Brief. Luma then ran it as an official ad and entered it into the 2026 Cannes Lions.